


This Fledgling Thing

by snarklyboojum



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, But he's working on it, M/M, Multi, Pansexual Sam Wilson, Polyamory, Sam Wilson Can Talk to Birds, Sam Wilson-centric, Steve's an asshole sometimes, boys talking about their issues, discussions of sexual identity, embedded art, people talk about sex a lot but no one actually has any onscreen, sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 04:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11268030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarklyboojum/pseuds/snarklyboojum
Summary: They say 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' but Sam has pretty big hands and he'd prefer the birds to keep their beaks out of his love life, thanks.





	This Fledgling Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yawpkatsi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yawpkatsi/gifts).



> Special thanks to [Leonie](http://theladymania.tumblr.com/) for the quick and dirty beta. Any mistakes you find are probably ones I added at the last minute.

One of Sam’s earliest memories is of his best friend singing to him about worms. 

His name was Sugar and he was small and brown and never left his cage. He sang about the sun and seeds and trees, girls and babies, but most of all about himself and how wonderfully magnificent he was. It took Sam a long time to realize no one ever sang back to Sugar except him. When he asked his mama about it she just told him to stop pestering the bird so much and to take his silly games outside. He’d pouted, but did as she told him. 

At his fifth birthday party, Sam opened the cage for the first time. But Sugar didn’t peck at the piece of cake Sam had saved special for him, or admire his fancy new shoes like the other kids had. Sugar just flew around and around the ceiling, bumping into things, too panicked to listen when Sam yelled for him to stop. He didn’t make a single noise, other than the _thunk_ of his little body hitting the wall over and over. Then he flew into the fan so hard he fell still to the ground, a tiny bundle of broken feathers and silence.

The window had been open the whole time. Sam had just watched as Sugar grew more and more frantic. He hadn’t known what else to do.

“It’s not your fault, baby,” his mother said later, dirt from the hole they’d dug in the park still crusted under her fingernails. “Sometimes it’s hard for simple things to live outside their cages, that’s all. They don’t understand how big the world really is.” She’d hugged him, and watched as Sam said a prayer over the little box where Sugar wasn’t sleeping. She’d meant to comfort him, he knew. But he also knew that they were the ones who’d put Sugar in that cage in the first place.

+++

It simply hadn’t occurred to Sam that anything was wrong with him at first. Kids didn’t question those sorts of things. Of course birds could talk and the Tooth Fairy was real; Santa, too, if you’re lucky and your family’s of the persuasion. And if the other boys at school couldn’t understand what the birds were saying, or his mother, or his _grandmother_ , then that meant he had to be _special_ , didn’t it? Like a superhero or prince from a fairytale.

Though Sugar had been his first and best friend – and Sam missed him every single day – he was far from his _only_ friend. He made it a point to say hello to every little bird he passed on his way to school or in the park because heroes were always polite to the citizens they protected. Their conversations didn’t always make sense, but a lot of things grownups said didn’t make sense, either, so he figured it was all right. 

He had an especially hard time understanding the speckly brown bird that lived on the corner where he waited for the school bus. They would meet each other there every morning and greet one another with little nods like the fancy adults did on the shows his mama liked to watch.

“Good morning, Mr. Starling.”

“MORNING, PERSON-FLEDGLING. THIS IS MY TREE.”

“I know. You tell me every morning.” He did, though Sam hadn’t tried correcting Mr. Starling since the first time they’d met; the bird simply refused to call the crossing sign where he’d made his nest anything but a tree. Sam learned early on that there were some battles you just couldn’t win. 

“THAT’S RIGHT. MY TREE. MINE! CAR ALARM! CAR ALARM! GOOD SHIT!”

“That’s an adult word, Mr. Starling!” 

“WHAT ADULT MEAN, PERSON-FLEDGLING?”

“Um. That you’re big and responsible and pay taxes and stuff. I can’t say adult words until I’m twenty-one, my mom said so. Then I can cuss all I want.”

“DON’T KNOW OTHER WORDS, BUT I BIG. BIGGEST BIRD AROUND. I A HAWK NOW LADIES. CHAT IT UP LIKE THAT.”

“Right. Uh. Your tree is very nice. The _‘don’t walk’_ part is very bright.”

“YES. THANK. MY TREE SO MUCH PRETTIER THAN OTHER TREES. OTHER TREES ARE SHITTY TREES. SNAP CRACKLE POP WOO HOO.”

“Okay. I have to go now, my bus is here.” 

“HAVE NICE SUNTIME, PERSON-FLEDGLING. SEE YOU SOON IF I’M NOT SEXING OR EATING. CHAT CHAT CHAT IT UP NOW LAD _IES_.”

+++

It was a plain _confusing_ way to spend your childhood, to say the very least. And no matter how many times he tried explaining it, no one believed him. His mama straight up yelled at him that she was tired of hearing his stories. The boys at recess called him names and picked on him. After what happened to Sugar, Sam started to wonder if _special_ maybe just meant _different_. That maybe his life wasn’t like in the movies.

By the time he was too old to believe in fairy tales or superheroes he was also starting to worry that _different_ actually meant _crazy_. And just like that his chats with the neighbors became something to hide instead of feel proud of. 

They became a secret. A terrible hidden thing no one else could ever know.

It weighed on him, pushing his head down and his ears closed when he walked. He stayed awake at night worrying that someone would _know_ , would find him out. Would uncover the lie of his normalcy and spread it like tar for everyone to see. That they’d lock him up for it.

Until one night, for no particular reason at all, he suffered a strange moment of revelation. He’d been laughing at the pigeons cooing horrible song lyrics to each other on the roof, quietly, so he wouldn’t wake his mom up in the other room. The notion just crystallized like a gemstone in the middle of his mind, gathering up all the badness and focusing a light right on the dark places.

 _If this is madness_ , he thought, _it has a gentle touch_. 

They’d been studying poetry in eighth grade English class and he might have fancied himself an up and coming Langston Hughes, the way every artsy black boy in Harlem does at one point or another. The idea grew roots and blossomed: he very well _might_ be insane, but did that really matter? It wasn’t hurting anyone but himself, and then hardly at all - the birds weren’t telling him to burn things or choke puppies or anything terrible like that. They weren’t telling him to do _anything_ ; they simply spoke so he could hear them. 

He could live with it. So what did it matter? Why should he let something like this run his life? Everyone had their quirks.

The thing he’d kind of been developing for Langston Hughes was a different and even more confusing problem. One that he _definitely_ couldn’t bring up to his mama. There was a line, and having The Talk about lusting after the girls, boys, teachers, and ancient freaking poets with his mother – who hosted the bible study for their block and still made him wear a tie on Sunday – was where Sam drew it in the sand, okay?

So, one crisis averted and another looming on the horizon, Sam went looking for answers the one place he knew he could find them. Of course, getting the ‘birds and bees’ talk from actual birds was a little… challenging. The neighbors definitely had a different perspective on things than he did. They were full of suggestions about _how_ he should find a partner, and what made one suitable over another, but everyone he talked to had something different to say.

Sam took a long weekend and interviewed every different type of bird he could, traveling from apartment all the way to the outer boroughs. He took his backpack with him and kept careful notes.

He started with the little house sparrow nesting in his mother’s flower box; the flowers were all dead by then, because she couldn’t water them, but neither of them had the heart to kick out the little family. “you find the Spot and you call,” the male chirped, voice almost lost over the sound of the midday traffic below. “if it’s a good Spot, you Stay. lady Stays with you. if all is good then Babies and you both Stay forever.” 

“YELL REALLY LOUD,” Mr. Starling said, who was actually Mr. Starling the Third and damn proud of it. “LADIES LOVE THE YELL. TRY COPYING SOMETHING ELSE. CELL PHONE RING TONE CELL PHONE RING TONE.”

In Sam’s experience doves and pigeons were generally soft, empty creatures that didn’t think much beyond food and being near one another. But there were exceptions to every rule. “ _Dancing_. Dancing, food, sex. That the good stuff.” The old bird only had one eye, but he snapped up the bit of strawberry Sam tossed his way without hesitation. “If lucky you find a long time buddy. If you very lucky you find a long time buddy _and_ a sometimes buddy! But only if good at dance. You good at dance, human? Here, I show you how.”

The ducks were nasty as hell and he wasn’t ashamed to admit he ran blushing as far away from them as he could. He ran away from the mean ass geese in the park, too, but for entirely different reasons. 

The _swans_ , though; the swans gave him something to think about. They paused in grooming their feathers long enough to actually focus on what he was asking.

“The winter flock says we should choose again. That if no eggs have come by now then they won’t. But we know better.” She bent her long neck to pluck gently at the down around her mate’s eye. The other bird stilled and let her. “The eggs will come, and then the babies. If we are patient.”

“If we are patient.” Her mate repeated it like a prayer. “And until then, we will practice. We are going to be the best parents someday.”

They were both, Sam was quietly, sadly thrilled to learn, lady swans.

Notebook full and feet sore, Sam trudged back to his apartment. It seemed that most birds thought of sex or relationships as a means to an end; the act itself didn’t seem to matter to them one way or another. (Except for the ducks. Yikes.) But it mattered to Sam. Quite a lot, actually, and at fourteen he wasn’t sure if he’d ever want babies – he certainly didn’t want them _now_. But having someone to try with, like the two swans, that sounded nice. Maybe even a couple someones; a big old flock all his own.

+++

It’s not until years later, after he’s used his GI bill to take a few classes and round out his education that he stumbles upon an actual _name_ for what he’s feeling. Knowing that it’s not just a bird thing, or a _Sam_ thing, that enough other people experience attraction the same way he does to put a name to it? Well. The relief of having this one identifiable thing in the craziness of his life is like being able to breathe for the first time in years. Like having asthma suddenly release its hold on his chest.

He leans out the window and shouts it loud for everyone to hear. His name is Sam Wilson, and he is not a freak. 

The curmudgeonly old pigeon the next building over yells at him to shut up, but Sam just gives him the finger and hollers all the louder.

+++

Sam only ever tells one person in his adult life about the bird thing.

It’s their last leave before the test run of the EXO-7 equipment and, like all good air force men before them, the team’s celebrating their impending mission by getting blind stinking drunk. It seemed fitting, considering they were about to fucking _fly_ the next morning, that they fly a little the night before. Besides, it was tradition to go into anything potentially life threatening hung-over; a fine custom put into practice since the days of the Apollo moon landings. 

Sam’s floating a couple feet above the patio furniture his body’s sprawled out on when the words tumble out of his mouth. “You know, I wanted to be a superhero when I grew up? I can even talk to birds and everything, like a super power.”

Riley snorts into his beer. “What, like Birdman? Oh wait, I know! The Falcon!” He makes a buzzing sound and twirls the bottle like it’s Superman flying around Metropolis. He sobers as much as he can when he sees Sam picking at the label of his own beer, deflated and pouting. “Shit. Fuck, man, you’re serious? You think you can talk to birds?” 

Sam huffs a little, tries to write it off like some stupid thing kids do. But for a minute, just one, all those high school feelings of uncertainty and insanity struggle up his windpipe like vomit. He’d get up and walk it off if he could feel his feet. Riley, who’s a good guy if not a dense little shit sometimes, lets it go.

Until the next morning, when Sam’s sobering up in the shower and Riley quacks a rubber duckie at him through the shower curtain.

“ _Sammy_ ,” he says for the duckie in a high-pitched voice like the lovechild of Oscar the Grouch and Tinkerbell. “ _Why you so mean? I love you_.” When he squeezes it the eyes bulge out, much like Sam’s do at the godawful noise. SQUEEEEEEEEEEE _fart_.

“Fuck you, you pasty bastard.” But he’s smiling when he pulls Riley through the curtain for a kiss and a noogie. They get water all over the bathroom floor, but no one really minds.

+++

Riley gets shot down over the desert, his limp body falling to land still and terrible on the ground, a bundle of broken wings and bones.

It’s Sam that retrieves his body. He has to chase away the carrion birds when he finally gets the chance to bring his friend home.

Sam stops talking to his avian neighbors that very night. He feels justified, considering some of the things he’s heard and seen in his time oversees. There’s nothing he can do to stop them from calling, their cries bouncing off the rocks around him the same as they’ve done for thousands of years and will continue to do long after he’s joined Riley and plunged from some great height.

He may not be able to deafen himself to their voices but he can stop listening for them. For a long time after that, his neighbor’s songs are just music playing in another room.

+++

Despite it all, being a civilian is even more insane than strapping a jet to his back and hoping his ass doesn’t catch on fire. Not even a week after he gets out two he gets a front row seat as two giant green monsters battle it out a block from his apartment and completely destroy the corner bodega so that he has to truck his ass onto the subway if he needs to buy groceries. And a year after _that_ fucking aliens attack downtown, and suddenly there are space whales and resurrected vintage superheroes and Thor was a real guy who liked Pop-Tarts, at least according to Twitter.

Thanks to the rising insurance fees and the growing likelihood of being squashed by some crazy supervillain, Sam’s mom decides it’s time to get the hell out of dodge and moves east to be closer to his sister and her babies. Sam follows a couple weeks later for want of anything better to do, and he tries his best to create a positive space around himself and his new digs. It turns out he can avoid his issues just as well in DC as anywhere else. The scenery’s nicer, though, especially when a certain distinctive figure starts passing him by on his morning jog every day.

Now, Sam didn’t permit words like “slut” or “promiscuous” or any of that. They hold sexual and social connotations that he’s just not down with. He prefers to keep his options open and grab onto happiness whenever he can. He doesn’t go looking for random hookups anymore – he’s lost some of the energy of his twenties, thank god – but if a pretty girl pulls up in a fancy car while he’s talking to a pretty boy? Well. He isn’t going to miss any opportunities, you know?

So Sam can say with confidence that he recognizes a courtship display when he sees one, especially when it goes running by him at an inhuman pace way too early in the morning. And when _Captain fucking America_ hangs around while Sam catches his breath for the apparently singular purpose of showing off how his shirt clings to the insane cut of his abs and pecs, then Sam sees it as his patriotic duty to flirt right back.

There’s a layer of sadness under all Cap’s shine that makes Sam offer a metaphorical hand out. He should have expected it, really; Sam’s seen the same look on every soldier to pass through the VA at one time or another and on his own face in the mirror often enough to recognize it. It adds a layer of attachment Sam hadn’t anticipated: Captain America was clearly a lot of things - one of which was a tired soldier, just like Sam.

Everything about meeting Steve Rogers might have screamed hookup, but Sam’s still surprised when he shows up to the VA in his painted-on jeans and fancy jacket. They talk about Riley, because Sam thinks Steve should hear the story and he’s currently in a place where sharing was more comforting than staying quiet about it. Considering what the history books have to say about Cap and his old crew Sam half expects the topic to come up anyway. 

The hall’s mostly emptied by the time they get to the heart of the issue, but Sam did a subtle check over his shoulders all the same; he’s not sure how much of this Steve wants to advertise, exactly, and Sam’s trying to maintain at least a passing separation between his work and personal life. 

“But seriously,” he says, “you could do whatever you want to do. What makes you happy?” Not that Sam’s not a thousand percent on board with Steve dolled up in ultimate fighting gear, or even plain old spangled spandex, but his heart quivers a little at Steve’s actual answer. Surely of all people Steve Rogers deserves to be happy.

“You don’t have to find something right away. It can be little things, at first. For example, you know what makes me happy?” Sam shifts close enough to smell Steve’s aftershave, a musky tang he can’t quite identify. The man’s eyelashes are _insanely_ long. “Breakfast. Most important meal of the day.”

Steve leans forward to glances over Sam’s shoulder at the big round clock on the wall. His eyes lower to half-mast. “It’s almost four. A little late in the day for waffles, isn’t it?”

Sam holds up a finger. “One: there is always time for waffles.” Two fingers, and he raises the heat in his own gaze to smoldering. “Two: if you’re not a ‘breakfast for dinner’ type of guy we might have even bigger problems than what time it is. Still. I think we can come up with something to occupy our time until tomorrow morning. Maybe even work up an appetite.”

Steve blinks heavily, his eyes flicking down to Sam’s mouth and back up again. “Haven’t you heard? Captain America’s got a great metabolism. I’m always hungry.”

+++

Sam's really, really glad most of the country had no idea what kind of a dirty motherfucker their national icon really was. After tonight he strongly suspects he’ll never be able to walk past the Smithsonian with a straight face again.

Hell, he’ll be lucky if he could walk again _period_. His legs feel like fucking jell-o. Plus he just couldn’t stop laughing, coasting along down the rabbit hole of way too many endorphins released in way too little a time. _Damn_ but that man was flexible.

He almost has it under control when the click of a lighter cuts through the panting on his left. And there he is, in all his naked glory, Captain America: lighting a cigarette and sinking into the mattress like he had every intention of staying.

And there’s the giggles bubbling up out of nowhere again. “What’s this? Captain America smokes! What the hell kind of a role model is that?” Steve exhales a long plume of smoke through his own grin. “Mmm mm mm. What would the tabloids have to say about that? And the _republicans_ , oh Steve! I can hear their hearts breaking from here!”

“Fuck the republicans.” The cigarette actually smells pretty fucking disgusting, some unfiltered off-brand Steve probably found in a gas station somewhere. It does look nice held between his pink lips, though, the ember tip flaring a little with every chuckle. “You know exactly what they’d say. And I’d tell them to go fuck themselves, I vote independent.”

“Oh my god, you fucking rebel.” It is a pretty thought, though, and an even prettier picture: Steve silhouetted against Sam’s bedroom curtains like some classic Herculean statue, casually wiping away the evidence of what he’d just enthusiastically been up to. An equally gorgeous and equally naked black man sprawled on the bed next to him.

Oh yeah. The National Enquirer would win a damn Pulitzer for the composition of that one. And he’s absolutely sure Captain America puffing on a smoke is exactly what the media coverage would focus on.

“You need to get an ashtray is all I’m saying. I better not find burn marks on my sheets.” 

Steve stretches until his toes pop over the end of the bed and his whole body arches into a bow. Sam’s mouth waters, just a little bit. “Pretty sure the sheets are already a lost cause.” He fishes around the floor by the side of the bed until he comes up with one of the empty condom wrappers. Steve ashes into the foil and offers Sam a drag.

“Nah man, I stopped smoking years ago. It’s a nasty habit, anyway. You know that shit’s bad for you?”

“No, really? I am shocked and appalled.” Steve blows out another long stream of smoke toward the ceiling, superlungs turning half the stick into ash in one go. He props his arm behind his head and Sam takes the opportunity to get a little more comfortable, tucking himself under Steve’s free arm and against his ridiculous chest. Even with the air stinking like sex and carcinogens, mashed up under Steve’s biceps is the most comfortable Sam’s been in weeks.

God, he loves cuddling. Sex is great – okay, sex is fucking _amazing_ and Sam’s favorite pastime – but the warm, quiet time snuggled up to his partner afterward comes in a close second. He rubs his head against the arc of Steve’s ribs and hums.

“You know, life’s taken me to some weird places, but I never thought I’d see Captain America light one up. I realize it’s weird that’s what’s throwing me considering I know what your O Face looks like, but there you go.”

“Is it really that hard to picture? Back in my day it was stranger if you didn’t smoke than if you did.”

“Times have changed, man. Besides, didn’t you have, like, _asthma_ or something?”

“Yep. And a whole host of other stuff on top of it. The doctors said it would actually strengthen my lungs to smoke, if you can believe that. Well, first they said I was making it up for attention but my ma just smacked her doctor friend on the back of the head and got me a prescription and a pack of smokes. It’s not something I do very often anymore, but the mood rises upon occasion. Usually right after something else does.” Oh lord. Of course Captain America would make dad jokes. Of course. “From what I hear it’s a miracle I even have the option to take it or leave it; not everyone’s so lucky.” 

“Addictive substances are pretty hard to avoid these days.” Sam rubs a finger over Steve’s nipple, idly, and rides the wave of Steve’s indrawn breath. “I had a buddy at the VA that tried going off caffeine cold turkey. It was not pleasant week for anybody.” Not to mention all the vets he worked with that got hooked on one type of drug or another. It wasn’t a joking matter, really, what some people had to do just to make it through the day. Reason one thousand and ten Sam had to count his lucky stars.

Steve tucked what was left of the cigarette stub into the wrapper and pinched it closed, tossing it in the general direction of the hallway. Sam decides to let it slide this time. “Tobacco was the least of my worries, though. Some of my old medicine had cocaine in it. And opium. Oh, and _cocaine_.”

“Shit. Look at you. Captain America’s a secret kinky sex-having dope fiend.”

“You think what we just did was kinky?” Sam smacks him on the tit and goes back to snuggling. They grin together in the dark for a minute before Steve goes on. “You’re right that things were different then. It wasn’t bad or good. Just different. We didn’t know any better.”

“And now I can sustain myself on the image of America’s golden boy high out of his mind on cough syrup.”

Steve chuckles and slides his free hand under the pillow to prop up his head. “Don’t let the propaganda fool you; I wasn’t anyone’s golden boy. Grew up in a black neighborhood and moved into a queer one ‘cause the rent was cheaper. Certain parts of town you couldn’t throw a brick without hitting an alley I got beat up in or a bar I got kicked out of. Only reason no one recognized me when the spangle circuit went through town was because the kind of folks I hung out with weren’t allowed in the theaters. Artists and musicians – some really great people got treated like shit because they looked different or fucked the wrong people. It still pisses me off.”

“This was what, the late thirties?” Christ, that would mean… If what Steve was saying was true, then he’d have to at least been on the outskirts of the Renaissance. Even if he never left Brooklyn, Harlem was just a train ride away. Sam thinks about the broken-spined poems he’d shoved into the bottom of every pack he’s ever carried, the words fading and soft from too many hands, and he isn’t sure if he’s saddened or envious about the fact that Steve got to live through something like that. 

“Mm hmm. Honestly, my reputation was shit amongst the gentry before I got the serum and the government got their mitts on me. The nice girls in my neighborhood wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire. It was always _that no good Rogers fella sticking his nose where he shouldn’t._ ” 

“You do a nice old lady there, Steve-o.”

“Thanks. _Running around with all manner of miscreants. Why can’t you be more like that nice Barnes boy, Steven? Now_ there’s _someone going places._ ”

“Barnes?” Sam’s knowledge of World War II is limited to a few lessons in high school but the name still sounds familiar. The way Steve tenses up underneath him connects all the dots. “Oh. Your wingman, huh?”

Steve clears his throat and shifts on the bed, turning his head towards the window. “Yeah, you could say that. Bucky was – he really was the best guy. My best guy.”

Sam’s gotten pretty familiar with that particular hitch in Steve’s voice over the past few years. The vets at the meetings carry it around in their pockets with their loose change. It’s the kind of pain you can’t outrun from, only learn to breathe around. It still leaves Sam gasping more nights than not.

Some folks grieve by remembering, by celebrating birthday toasts and keeping urns on mantels. Others bury it so fast and so deep it only surfaces like an ugly zombie to wreak havoc on the ones left behind. Sam’s willing to bet good money which one Steve Rogers is.

“Bucky Barnes, huh?” he says, forcing lightness into his voice when it wants to be flat and empty. “Tell me about him?”

Steve’s quiet for so long that Sam thinks he might have pressed too hard on a still healing wound. He gives Steve the time to think it through or change the subject, fingers gently caressing the same path on his abdomen over and over again. He’s not trying to start anything strenuous – he knows from experience that sometimes it takes an anchoring touch to pull yourself out of bad thoughts. Sometimes it takes the darkness of a room and the skin of a stranger to set things in motion.

“ _Bucky_.” The word passes Steve’s lips with a sigh, like a prayer; it’s easy to imagine that’s how he always says it inside his head. “Bucky was a lot of things to a lot of people. He came from a good family with room to spare and a steady income, even when times were hard. Ridiculously handsome. Smart as a whip, too, and knew how to make people like him.” He huffs out a little laugh. “Everyone wanted him to marry their daughters. And the girls were practically throwing themselves at his feet for the chance.”

“Did he have anyone special?”

“Oh, they were all special; Buck treated every one of his dates like they were royalty. But none of them stuck around. He’d take them out, show them a good time, then walk them back home just before curfew. No one ever even _suggested_ a chaperone go along, that’s how much they trusted him. And they were right to; I don’t think I ever saw him so much as kiss a girl on the mouth. Always said he respected ‘em too much to try something like that.”

“Sounds like a saint. Or a eunuch, either one.” 

“Eh, I wouldn’t go that far. Sex just didn’t seem to occur to him as an option.” Sam could hear the smile creeping around the edges of Steve’s voice even if he couldn’t see it. “Of course, I was having as much sex as possible at the time so it’s likely my perspective was a little self-centered. You should probably take all that with a grain of salt.” 

San snorted and nuzzled closer, encouraging Steve to wrap his arm a little tighter around his shoulders. “Maybe it was the girls that were the problem. You think he liked boys instead and didn’t want anyone to know?”

Steve sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe? I mean – he never acted like he did, anyway. He knew all about my sneaking around so it wasn’t a secret or anything. _So long as you’re careful_ , that’s all he ever said about it. It didn’t matter if I made time with girls or boys or both, which I did. Often. For an angry little skinny nobody I was very friendly.”

Steve’s lapse of quiet is contemplative this time. “You know, there were times. Times when we’d both have a few spare minutes and just… We’d just be together. No talking, or radio – we’d just sit and share each other’s company. Breathe the same air. I’d draw him and he’d let me or we’d rest together on the bed like you and me are doing now. It was… peaceful. Quiet. I didn’t have too much of that then.

“He was my friend. Above all else, he was my friend.”

There’s a softness in the tilt of Steve’s consonants that turns what Sam meant as a question into a certainty. “You loved him, didn’t you.”

“More than anything. More than life.” 

Sam stretches until he can see Steve’s face in the fragile light coming through the window. He rubs a thumb gently over the soft skin under his eye – dry, though the lashes above it are spiky with damp – and leans in to kiss him. For a heart stopping second he thinks he might have read the situation wrong, but then Steve’s hands come up to frame his face and they both sink deep into each other again. The kiss lasts a long while, deep but unhurried, and by the time it’s over Sam simultaneously wants to curl up into a ball on Steve’s chest and sleep for a year or to jump right out of his bones. 

He hums and settles for thumping his head against Steve’s shoulder instead. "That is some tragic fairy tale shit, Rogers. Straight out of Brothers Grimm. Here I thought Snow White had it rough, living with seven men in the woods." 

Steve barks out a laugh, surprised, and not the least bit watery. “Yeah, I only lived with _six_. And she never even had to deal with a war on.”

“Don’t feel too bad. Fancy white folks are always over exaggerating how hard their life is.”

“Oh man, the Howlies would’ve loved that. Probably would’ve marched to ‘High Ho’ until it drove me crazy.” He wraps both arms around Sam’s shoulders, wiggling a little until they’re more or less laying next to each other. “What about you? Were you and Riley ever..."

Having Steve’s bulk curled around him didn’t stop the familiar ache from blooming in Sam’s chest. But he owed Steve something after confessing all that. "We fucked a couple times on leave and during training, that sort of thing. Didn't want that kind of tension between us on missions, though; we were there to help people and distractions were dangerous. So we decided we'd be better off friends without the benefits and kept it platonic. I was best man at his wedding if you can believe that."

“No shit? I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if Bucky’d gotten himself hitched.” 

“It wasn’t that bad. Nothing really changed between us, we just didn’t have sex. She’s a really nice girl.” Whom Sam hadn’t talked to in years. Shit, he’d barely looked Melissa in the eye at Riley’s funeral.

He wonders how Peggy Carter fit into Steve’s story of best friends and lovers – everyone knew his famous last words to her from the bridge of the plane… or at least the lines from the TV miniseries, anyway. (Sam’s not ashamed to admit he taped that one.) But considering he’s only just met the guy Sam figures there’s a limit to the amount of sharing they can squeeze into one night. So enough of this melancholy bullshit.

Sam hauls himself up to straddle Steve’s lap, his knees squeezing _just enough_ around Steve’s waist as he got comfortable. A twitch of interest along the curve of his ass suggested that Steve’s metabolism wasn’t the only thing accelerated about him. Sam – still twitchy in the abdomen but open to being convinced – gave a little wiggle just to see him squirm.

“Your accent’s different when you talk about Bucky, you now that?”

“My accent’s always different. You think this is how I really talk? I can’t even remember what my voice is supposed to sound like anymore.” Steve runs his hands up Sam’s thighs, the scrape of the calluses on his palms making the hair all the way up to Sam’s arms stand on end. “I _can_ tell you that slipping into different accents make for a good disguise. I mean, all this _gloriousness_ is hard to hide.” He gestures grandly at the expanse of his nudity and Sam pokes him in the belly button. “But you'd be amazed what a slouch and some properly timed curse words can do. At least according to one of my coworkers, anyway.”

Of course by _coworker_ Steve means _Avenger_. Meaning a goddamn superhero was trying and failing to teach Sam’s weeknight hookup proper espionage techniques.

He tilts his head back and laughs at the absurd improbability of it all. How Sam got to this point he’ll never understand. Steve just smiles back at him, teeth and eyes glinting.

“You know,” Sam said through his smile, running his own hands up and down Steve’s chest. “Way back in high school it was, like, a requirement to study what y’all got up to back in the day? Which makes tonight all kinds of surreal for a variety of reasons. But that doesn’t actually mean anything in the long run of things. I got a C in history class.” He leans down so that his whole body lines up with Steve’s, slowly coming to a stop with their feet entwined and lips a breath away. “You’re more than the sum of your parts to me, okay? And tomorrow, if you maybe wanna –” 

Steve grabs the back of Sam’s head and crashes their mouths together, practically sucking the words right out of him, and they pretty much pick up right where they left off after that.

+++

Steve falls asleep before Sam does, squishing his face into the pillow and taking up way too much of the mattress. Sam just lays there, body pleasantly buzzing and boneless, counting the moles on Steve’s shoulder.

He hadn’t been surprised to learn about Steve’s feelings towards Barnes, though the whole conversation had thrown all of his other expectations right out the fucking window. What a little hellion Steve must’ve been back in the day. Sam would place good money on Barnes using his reputation to keep Steve out of hot water just as often as he used his fists – but of course, there must’ve seemed like nothing Steve couldn’t handle on his own. The reputation for getting his ass kicked in alleys certainly made a lot more sense once you knew he was rocking the old pride circuit in a size small.

What he’d told Steve had been mostly the truth; he’d loved learning about the thirties and forties Harlem and the joyful rebellious _pride_ people took in themselves those days, but the war that came after had not been his favorite subject to study. But he knew enough about how things worked to fill in the blanks of what Steve had told him tonight.

Steve Rogers no longer existed, at least not in the same way he did all those years ago. The high brass would have gleefully erased his entire existence after Erskine stamped him 1A; they certainly deleted his criminal record and all public record of illicit activity, which Sam was now one hundred percent certain existed. Hell, they’d have been happy to declare him legally dead and squirreled him away in some lab somewhere if it hadn’t been for that very public stunt with the Nazi submarine. Instead they rebranded him into someone they could put on posters to sell war bonds to kids. The whitest whitebread America was ever forced to eat.

What did being Captain America mean to Steve, to keep doing it for so long? It would have been so easy for the little shit-stirrer from Brooklyn to be absorbed into the serum along with his scoliosis and weak lungs. Was the military machine that taught Steve to pitch his voice to the back of a room responsible for his disappearance? Or was the man in the tights the same one that got beat up outside of queer bars and just kept going right back in? Where did Steve go when Cap put on the uniform?

Christ. _Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be._

Steve stretches a little in his sleep and pushes Sam another inch closer to falling off the bed. His hand lazily strokes across the sheet until it bumps into Sam’s elbow where it latches on like it’s found a favorite teddy bear. It’s cute, for the millisecond before that hand relocates to the globe of his asscheek and grabs hold with a mighty grip. Steve’s grinning in his sleep, cocksure and crooked.

 _You little shit_ , Sam thinks, and flops his head back down onto the pillow.

+++

They never actually make it to breakfast, as Steve hightails it out the door before Sam’s even awake enough to notice. The whole thing would seem like a bizarre dream if it weren’t for the blonde hair on his pillow and the lingering lethargy in his thighs.

Steve doesn’t leave a cell number or even a note with a flimsy excuse about being called away to save the world. He’s just gone.

Sam’s not sure what he expected, taking a superhero home for a night of fun and going all unexpectedly introspective on him in the afterglow. He usually knows better than to pin anything on one night stands, let alone fucking _emotions_ but… He’d liked Steve, was the thing, and thought maybe Steve liked him, too.

Sometimes Sam could be a real idiot about these things. Instead of moping around about it like he wants to he runs an extra lap around the mall and tries not to hate himself or Captain America.

He does it again the next day, and the next, and then he’s barely in the door when Steve shows up with the hot redhead from before and a corrupt government institution hot on his heels. It’s not exactly flowers and an apology, but Sam has a feeling that when it comes to Steve Rogers they might as well be the same thing.

+++

They don’t really get a private moment together until about a week after his entire life’s been flipped upside down again. Steve looks up at him from a nest of hospital linens and croaks, “I’m sorry I missed out on trying your waffles.”

And Sam just has to kiss him for that one.

+++

It’s disturbingly easy to pack up his life and join Steve on the road. The house is a rental and he’s not close enough to his neighbors that they’ll miss him when he’s gone. Sam doesn’t even have any plants to worry about.

His only hesitation is in ditching the VA; he’s sure not a one of them would fault him for leaving if they knew the details behind it, but as it is he can’t even offer them two weeks’ notice. Sam’s group is in good hands, though, probably better than his own – he’d only _just_ gotten certified to actually work there instead of just volunteer to set up chairs and brew coffee, and the other counselors all have a lot more experience. 

His mom even takes the news suspiciously well, though she frowns epically when he tells her he doesn’t actually know where he’s going or how long he’ll be gone. His years of deployment have convinced them both about the wonder of video chats and she lets him leave without a fuss so long as he promises to call every other week and text as often as he’s able. Sam kisses her on the cheek before he goes, the quiet melody of birdsong floating in from the living room. He has yet to venture close enough to either of his mother’s pet finches to hear them more clearly, but he can guess what they have to say. He goes the long way through the house so he doesn’t have to see their cage by the front window.

+++

The hunt for Steve’s violent and brainwashed ex is over almost before it even begins. They have no real leads or any idea how to find any, despite Natasha’s Magical Russian Files of Extreme Torture. The Winter Soldier is a ghost in the wind, and they’re the idiots with night vision cameras asking him to turn on a lamp.

It’s not surprising that it takes a lot out of Steve. His clenches his jaw tighter and tighter with every dead end they stumble across, though Sam offers to alleviate some of the pressure by liberally applying orgasms at every opportunity. For all of Steve’s famed libido, there aren’t as many as he’d hoped for; they share a room and a bed when there’s one available, and Sam is always left completely satisfied, but Steve is Not Happy. There’s a hesitance when he touches Sam now, a half second delay before he’ll meet his eyes. They keep the light off a lot of the time.

Sam finds himself missing the easy camaraderie of their first night together. 

The last communiqué with New York had hinted that the staff that released all the aliens might have gone missing during Shield’s collapse. Steve had stared at the email for a full five minutes and then deleted it before bringing up the map of their latest empty base in the middle of nowhere.

Sam’s officially worried. Steve’s got himself so wound up in guilt and anger he’s going to crack right down the middle if Sam can’t do something to ease him back a bit. There’s not much more he can do about the Hydra thing that he’s not already, but if there’s another reason for the distance growing between them then he can at least put those fears to rest.

It’s time he and Steve have the Talk.

He waits until they’ve made camp in a little bed and breakfast somewhere in Europe to bring it up. Steve’s cracked a window and is working his way through a pack of menthols in quick succession; the little old lady who runs the place is going to kick his ass once she smells the smoke, but Sam’s only got so much energy to deal with this shit and right now he has other priorities than Steve getting smacked by someone’s Czech grandmother.

“So,” he says, stretching out on the frilly duvet. “You know how I’m pansexual, right?”

Steve flicks his lighter closed and exhales angrily. “They made me sit through all these ‘sensitivity lectures’ when I first woke up. Personally, I think it’s a load of crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s all meaningless. Just analyzing and dissecting every minutia of life until the emotions behind it loses all meaning. People don’t fit into neat categories like that no matter what the normals want to think.”

“I’m sorry, the _normals_?” Sam’s neck twitches and his eyebrow arches damn near to his hairline. “What the hell are you talking about, Steve?”

“The normals. The average fucks in the majority that are terrified of anything different than what they’re familiar with.”

Sam’s eyebrow is in danger of jumping right off his forehead. “Thus implying that we’re not normal? Being atypical does not make us freaks, Steve.”

“That’s the point, though! All those different orientations and personality types and shit? They’re just useless labels forcing people into little boxes. It makes it sound like we’re fucking coffee orders.”

Sam stares at Steve through the rank cloud of smoke. “There are no words to describe how fucking wrong you are right now.” He bounces off the bed to pace, not even sure how he stayed laying there as long as he did. 

Steve just blinks at him, leaning back in his chair so Sam has room to move around. He might also be trying to distance himself from the fury Sam’s sure is emanating from every pore. “Did you actually pay attention in those classes or are you purposely keeping your head in your ass because you like the view?”

“Sam –“

“Oh no, wait, I’ve got it. Your teacher was one of those trendy white ladies with a cardigan, a corgi puppy, and three grown ass kids in college? That’s the only way it makes sense, Steve, because everything you just said? Is full of shit!”

“Look, it’s just –“

“No, you don’t get to talk right now. You gave up your right to talk when you started spouting that bullshit. You just listen now.” Sam takes a deep breath, trying to think. This was not how he’d pictured this conversation going. _Christ_. He turns to face Steve, who’s watching him as if Sam was the one who might explode, and yeah, that wasn’t so far off.

He takes another deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay. First of all, those _labels and shit_ didn’t come from Starbucks, Steve. They represent years of people’s hard work to get the representation they deserve. Those _labels_ are a _recognition_ , an acknowledgment that what we are is worth naming. That we’re worth talking about.”

“Of course you’re worth –“

“ _I’m not done._ I notice you jumped on board the whole anti-racism thing real quick; this ain’t no different, Steve. People can call themselves whatever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want to and it’s nobody’s business but their own. I’ve worked hard to come to terms with who I am. If I want to use a word to describe myself so I feel validated then I fucking will. I’m not asking you to do the same. But I am asking you to respect that someone else _does_. Respect the work behind that decision.” 

The tobacco from Steve’s cigarette had fallen to the carpet, shredded when he’d clenched his hands. He looks down at the little pile now, his voice almost lost over the hum of the kitchen downstairs. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I just – I’m sorry. I’m just fucked up right now. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“You sure sounded like you meant it. And you didn’t actually take anything out on me personally, just the foundations I’ve built my adult life around.”

“I’m _sorry_. You have to understand, in my day –“

“Don’t. Do not even start in on that _in my day_ bullshit excuse. You’ve been here long enough to know better by now and even if you didn’t ‘what you’re used to' and ‘what is right’ are two different things. Fuck. _In your day_ they wouldn’t have let me into this fucking hotel, let alone share a room with your white ass, _let alone_ not give a fuck what we did together once we were inside it. _In your day_ queer black guys like me got _lynched in the fucking street_ , so don’t you dare tell me to my face I need to accept your point of view. _Your day_ was shit and you know it, Steve.”

“I know. Yeah, I know.” Steve rubs at the bridge of his nose, as if to ward off a headache or maybe tears. His voice hasn’t gotten any louder. “This… I need to think about this. _Clearly._ I am sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. And I do respect you, Sam, very much. I just – I need you to understand that.”

Sam takes yet another deep breath, willing the tension out of his shoulders. “Yeah, I know.”

“You said _first_.”

“What?”

“Earlier. You said _first of all_. What was the other thing you were going to yell at me about?”

“I actually forget what I was going to say. But the conversation did have a point.” Sam sinks back down onto the bed, biting back the apology on his tongue. He refuses to be sorry about this, no matter how hard Steve sad-labradors at him. “And I wasn’t going to yell at you. At least not about this.”

“I’m listening.”

Oh, hell. “I _usually_ use the orientation thing as an opener – remember when I said I was pansexual? Yeah. From there I usually smooth my way on into the Polyamory Talk, which I thought would make you feel better in case you were harboring any stupid guilt about knocking boots with me while on the trail for your One True Love or something. But I’m not even sure that’s a necessary conversation anymore.”

“Poly – what?”

“Look, Steve. Maybe this whole Avengers Assemble thing is coming at a good time. We can take a step back, see if this is something we really want to be doing.”

“ _Sam_.”

“Quit looking at me like I broke up with you. This isn’t goodbye forever or anything it’s just… You head back to New York and meet up with your hero buddies, get some training in, kick some hydra ass. I’ll keep looking for your boy. We’ll keep in touch, check in every so often. Do some thinking.”

Steve slumps there, shoulders bent and eyes far away. Sam’s tempted to say he looks defeated, and that’s a word he’d never thought to associate with Steve Rogers before today. He nods and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, okay.”

They get another room for the night and Steve avoids getting smacked by the landlady by dragging his stuff down the hall and leaving Sam to deal with the smell. He gets on a plane to New York the next morning and that’s that.

+++

Sam wanders around Europe and Northern Africa for the next month, following the tiniest clues about the whereabouts of Bucky Barnes, scraping through miles of false leads and carefully hinted at sightings. He comes up short every time. It’s not just that Barnes is good at hiding; people seem to talk less freely to him when he doesn’t have his blonde shadow backing him up. Steve’s earnestness had a way of transcending language barriers like nothing else Sam’s ever seen. The hotels and campsites are boring and empty without the need to argue over who gets what side of the bed.

If he really wanted to he supposes he could spend the night with a random local at a bar somewhere –he and Steve’s made no promises, after all – but his heart’s just not into it. He tells himself he’s not pining and puts another stamp in his passport.

The closest Sam ever gets to the Winter Soldier is when he’s desperate enough to interview a flock of ducks about in Lisbon. It’s the first time he’s spoken to a bird in years, let alone a whole group of them, and he never would have done so in the first place if he hadn’t been sitting at the café near the pond and overheard them mourning The Gloved Man and his handouts. They remembered him specifically because he came at the same time every day and would share an entire loaf of bread, even the soft insides. He’d sit by the fountain and watch them swim after the food was gone. The man was quiet and hadn’t minded when they’d climbed up the bank to sit in the shade cast by his shoulders. One day he simply hadn’t returned. They assumed he’d flown away to another lake somewhere, and hoped to share water with him again soon. 

This was often how migratory birds spoke of one another. It was lovely, in a melancholy sort of way, how familiarly Zen they were in their approach to life and death. Sam supposed it was bound to happen when half of your family would fly away and never come back every single year, but it always hurt something deep inside him anyway. He usually had to take a nap after dealing with them for any length of time if he didn’t want to break down in tears.

Sam has no proof The Gloved Man was actually Barnes or not – ducks aren’t exactly great at identifying individuals, and especially not by a grainy screenshot bulled from security footage – but there’s something there, a feeling maybe, about the way they describe the man’s stillness, and how they’d rested their heads on his ankle without fear of being kicked.

He stays at a local hostel overnight and has breakfast at the same cafe by the lake the next morning, sharing his croissant with the ducks. He buys Steve a pretty postcard of the park and writes _ya boy likes the green spaces_ on the back of it, sending it away before he second guesses exactly which boy he was talking about.

Sam watches the sunset over the city and can’t help but think of Steve’s smile and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he really means it. He thinks of how excited Steve would be to draw the ladies selling trinkets on the roadside in their shawls and the skyline of this strange and beautiful city.

He misses Steve so much it hurts. That little son of a bitch.

+++

The Poly Talk has ended more relationships than it’s started, but it’s something Sam believes in and feels his partners have a right to know.

Being polyamorous doesn’t mean he expects a Get Out of Jail Free card for cheating on people, or that he believes monogamy isn’t “present in the animal kingdom” like he’s heard some assholes argue –plenty of other species are monogamous for a season or two and that works out fine for them. 

Sam’s not a dick, okay? At least he tries not to be. The people he’s with deserve respect. He doesn’t expect his partners to check in with him before they have a conversation with someone else, or even go out for coffee – he’s certainly not doing that – but if he plans on fucking someone else then he’s going to be careful about it and let whoever else he’s with know it’s a thing beforehand. He doesn’t go out looking for someone to casually hook up with, but if there’s the possibility of making an actual connection there then he doesn’t want to miss out on sharing something with anyone simply because he’s already sharing it with someone else. And he doesn’t expect his partners to miss out on that, either.

Then again, he can count his list of serious relationships on one hand while making a fist, excluding Riley, so all that remains mostly theoretical. But he knows in his heart it’s true. There’s enough love to go around. What he feels for one person doesn’t diminish what he might feel for someone else.

+++

Sam’s back in the states and on his best behavior around Steve’s work friends (and holy _shit_ but Iron Man just sent a robot over to him with a shot of whiskey worth more than his entire first apartment how is this his life?) but he’s guessing that parties follow the same pattern whether it’s superheroes attending them or random folks from down the block. The addition of senior veterans from the local VA make the scene doubly predictable; it’ll about an hour in before someone either gets carted back to the home or starts a fistfight about something or other. Sam’s got his money on the mouthy one with the big glasses as instigator.

Sam loses all track of the party once Steve joins him at the bar, though. He looks _good_ , like maybe Nat helped him with his hair good, and also like he’s enjoying himself in public for the first time since Sam’s met him. There’s a familiar glint in his eye that Sam’s come to associate with rapid nudity and a pinch somewhere private. The naughty curve of his mouth as he leads Sam to one of the pool tables is one hundred percent Little Shit Steve, and Sam can’t help by grin right on back.

Sam might be guilty of laying the _sexy_ on a little thick during the game, making sure to wrap his lips just so around his beer and arranging his shots to best show off the arch of his back. Sometimes a man just has to remind those around him exactly how good his hands look caressing a cue. He also may or may not have worn his favorite pair of pants just for the occasion. 

It sends a thrill all the way through him when he sees Steve’s eyes linger or his tongue dart out to wet his lips. He hasn’t forgotten their argument, but it all seems so much less important with Steve damn near _glowing_ right in front of him.

Sam’s a goddamn professional at flirtation and it all pays off when Steve slams him against one of the glass walls around the corner from some of the drunken octogenarians. They kiss fast and hot and Sam actually feels dizzy when Steve finally pulls away to let their foreheads rest together. His hands move by themselves to push Steve’s jacket out of the way and linger along the breath of hi ridiculously broad shoulders. 

Steve rubs his whole body along Sam’s in one long ripple, lining up in all the right places and zinging through Sam’s central nervous system. They’re practically panting into each other’s mouths. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m an asshole and I’m sorry. I really want to hear your polyamory talk, I do. Just maybe later?”

 _Christ_ , he can feel Steve’s nipples hardening through both their shirts, how the hell is that even – “Mmm. Yeah, yeah okay.”

“I missed you, Sam. Every day. I put your postcard up on the fridge so I could see it all the time.”

“Oh fuck me. Me, too. I missed you, too.”

+++

Steve takes Sam perhaps a little too literally, not that he’s complaining. The vets around the corner get a show and Sam misses the killer robots attacking the afterparty because he refuses to hang out with the Avengers with stains on his pants and Ultron doesn’t have the decency to wait for him to come back from his hotel with a clean pair before making his grand entrance.

Things move quickly after that, and after the army of robots almost brings the house down on the entire planet half of their heavy hitters are out of the running. Suddenly Sam’s an Avenger, an honest to god superhero, and he can barely keep the smile from his face long enough to take his security ID photo. He hadn’t been prouder at his graduation or when he signed the lease on his first car. Not even when he stepped off that first ledge and let his wings carry him away without fear. 

Flying had felt like coming home. _This_ \- having a place on the team, of earning the right to carry some of that tremendous responsibility – this is like finally getting something he’d never known existed but that his whole life has been building toward. He understands why Thor’s so hung up on being _worthy_ now.

Being an Avenger is one of the most important things he’s ever done.

It’s also the most god-awful _tiring_ thing he’s ever done, too.

Helping people feels good; it always feels good, whether it’s buying a homeless guy a sandwich or stopping terrorists from stealing biologic weapons of mass destruction. But there’s also tiny men running around _inside his suit_ and no time alone with Steve to speak of outside of strategy meetings and combat training. And there’s _so much training_. Even with the upgrades to the Falcon tech courtesy of Tony Stark (holy _shit_ ) Sam hasn’t been in this kind of physical shape in his _life_ , not even in his twenties when the USAF had him running drills all day and he thought he was fucking indestructible. His abs are so hard he could fucking grate cheese on them. He and Natasha go to a Planet fitness once just to make the bros there lifting weights cry – it’s glorious, and the youtube video surpasses viral straight into meme.

Being an Avenger is worth it. He’s glad he’s doing it. But he’s also not sleeping well, thinner in the face than he’d prefer, and basically running himself ragged. He’s pretty sure there’s a correlation there but he doesn’t have the energy at the end of the day to examine it. He doesn’t actually have the energy for anything, except binge-watching Netflix until he falls asleep on the couch.

And then some fuckhead in Washington gets a bug up his ass and suggests they’re too powerful for their own good, and it all goes FUBAR in a big fucking hurry. He can’t even say he’s surprised about how quickly the lines are drawn in the sand and who’s got whose back, or the fact that it’s only _now_ Barnes shows his ugly face and that he’s still just as dangerous as he used to be; though the prospect of several Winter Soldiers version 2.0 is eyebrow raising.

Vision winds up shooting a beam at him that comes close enough to scrape off some of the paint on his wings, and winds up hitting War Machine instead. Sam flies as fast as he can but Rhodey hits the ground before Sam can finish his dive, leaving a smoking and crumpled pile of armor in a pit in the ground. Sam hears carrion birds and fan blades, though the fight has left the field completely silent. And then Stark shoots him and he doesn’t hear anything at all.

+++

Sam had learned a long time ago that creatures meant to fly shouldn’t be locked up in cages. He’d never considered himself one of those things before he had the choice of flight taken away from him.

Then he meets the real Bucky Barnes, and learns that some cages you’re forced to carry with you.

The thought doesn’t make prison any easier to take, though.

+++

If his first meeting with the Winter Soldier was enough to blow his expectations of what Barnes might have been like out of the water, his second encounter was almost enough to make him want to throw a life vest after them and haul Steve’s idyllic Bucky back to shore. Almost. Sam knows enough about trauma to realize the sorts of things Barnes was working through took a lot more than a crappy safe house and some plums to get past. Still, he has to admire him for even trying in the first place. Whatever gets you through the day, and all that.

T’Challa must think so, too, or at least is a better adult than all of the Avengers combined and recognizes when he’s fucked up enough to try and fix it. He welcomes them into his home long enough to repair their wounds and gather their strength, even offers a temporary answer to the problem of Barnes’ triggers with a softer form of cryo than any he was offered before. Steve argues about it until he’s blue in the face, but one word from Bucky and he goes silent and yielding – a trick Sam would dearly like to learn.

He leaves them alone the morning Barnes is due to be frozen, wandering the palace halls and staring for a long time into the surrounding jungle. Wakanda is unlike anything Sam has ever seen or thought could possibly exist, but there’s songs in the trees here the same as everywhere else.

In a world where the Hulk and Ultron and Captain _fucking_ America can exist – when he’s been both blessed and cursed to live the life that he’s had – is talking to birds such a strange thing? Is it something he has to punish himself with, even after all this time? Or can he just… Can it be one of the things he accepts about himself and learns to love?

Honestly, if understanding bird speech is the worst Sam has to deal with then he should consider himself fucking lucky. 

He goes out to the complex’s back patio and sets up a tray of chopped fruit far enough from the main building to not overwhelm any curious guests. It’s a little weird that they didn’t allow throwing out seeds or bread, but one of the frowning Ladies With Spears assured him this was what birds ate here, and that he would respect the land or regret it. Sam wisely chose to respect it.

Sam settles on a deckchair and waits. It’s not long before the first visitor lands on the tray, grabs a bite, and takes off again. Then another lands and lingers, staring at Sam, before doing the same. Eventually a little group of birds are hopping around the tray and talking quietly to themselves, ignoring Sam like he was part of the decorative statuary. They remind him a little of the feral monk parrots that took over parts of Green-wood Cemetery, despite being bigger and a lot more colorful. 

They were definitely enjoying the fruit, though, if the little NUM NUM NUMs coming from their curved beaks meant anything.

This is only the third time he’s fed birds like this since Riley fell; he visited the ducks in Central Park after returning stateside for the funeral, and he just couldn’t take the sound and smell of feathers in the air. He sobbed so hard he got dizzy and squashed the bread in his hands before the mallards could get any of it. The second time had been on the heels of the Winter Soldier in Lisbon.

Now he puts his feet up and listens. The birds’ idle chatter washes over him, the soothing white noise in the background of his entire life.

The scrape of the tray scooting across the grass has him opening his eyes, alert to a larger bird landing less than daintily in the middle of the congregation. It’s no predator, though it is oddly familiar: bigger in the chest than the parrots, a soft dark gray with white spots on the shoulders, and sleek feathers that shine iridescent in the afternoon haze. Its beak and feet might be bright yellow, with another yellow ring around each eye, but Sam was born and raised in New York and he recognizes a pigeon when he sees one.

The bird coo-bitches at the little ones who won’t clear a path to the food, even though there’s enough room for everyone along the tray rim and they’re just being stubborn. It’s a snarky, resigned sound Sam has only ever heard pigeons make before and he laughs in spite of himself. He even responds in kind, and the bird flails before falling off into the grass.

It comes up bobbing its head and staring at Sam. "Did you just coo-bitch at me? Can you speak bird?"

“Yeah, kinda, for all the good it’s done me.”

“Holy crap! That’s amazing!” The bird fluffs its feathers in excitement and does another little bop dance. Behind it the parrots have finished off the last of the fruit and fly as one back into the trees. Sam watches them go but the pigeon doesn’t seem to mind. He – because its voice has a distinct male baritone, Sam decides it must be a _he_ – steps closer to chair instead. “Where did you come from, Man, that you can speak bird?”

Sam sighs and looks up at the fog rolling down from the mountains. “Far the hell away from here, man.” He tucks his legs up and pats the end of the chair, inviting the bird to get comfortable out of the dewy grass. “I’ve gotta say, your grammar’s pretty good for a pigeon. Most birds I talk to wouldn’t know a proper noun if it preened them in the face.” 

“Thank you, Man.” He hops up onto the lowest rung of the footrest, little claws latching on carefully. “My hatchnest was next to a primary school and I listened in on lessons. I can also sing ‘The Little Yellow Dog’ and ‘The Alphabet Song’.“

“Sounds nice. Bet the ladies love that.”

“Oh yes. I’m pretty great. It was a really good school.” 

It seems like it’s a really good _everything_ in Wakanda, from schools to markets to monarchy. The country doesn't sit exactly right, though, the same way DC or the base out in Omaha rang off. Just different enough to not be a proper _home_. Lately it feels like the only time he can relax is when Steve’s in the room. Sam knows it’s fucked up; T’Challa’s people hadn’t been exactly _welcoming_ to him, but they hadn’t beaten him with sticks or anything, and his little rooms made the Avengers Tower look like the cheapest property on the Monopoly board. It didn’t make any sense but it didn’t keep him from feeling that way.

Not that he’d seen much of Steve since he sprung Sam from prison like the smirking son of a bitch Sam’s come to know and love. But just knowing he was somewhere inside the sprawling palace behind him made Sam breathe easier.

He shifted so that his legs wouldn’t fall asleep. “Okay, so here’s something I always wanted to know. Why do birds always speak English? Like every one of you, no matter what country I’m in, always understand me.” 

“Uh. I don't know what that is.”

“What, _English_? I thought you said the schools were good here.”

“I’m not speaking English, whatever that is. I’m speaking _bird_ , fucknut, I don’t know what you think you’re doing.” He fluffs up a little, indignantly, then settles down again. The pigeon coos at him, a wordless little sound he’s heard all manner of doves and pigeons make to each other over the years that seems to mean anything from _wanna cuddle_ to _get your feather out of my eye_ but is almost always meant in a friendly fashion. “I’m sorry, Man, that was rude. I’ve honestly never understood why men need to name things, though. Wakanda. Telephone. Stevie Nicks. A thing is just a thing. It doesn’t always have to have a name.”

 _Stevie Nicks?_ What the hell ever, Sam’s not going to ask. He pulls a bit of mango out of the little sack he carried out his own lunch in and chucks a piece over to the pigeon, who flaps his wings a little, lunging after the piece and gobbling it up in seconds flat. He makes happy _num num_ sounds under his breath. Sam takes a bite himself of mango himself and has to suck the juice off his lip before it drips onto his shirt; the fruit’s really fresh and really, _really_ delicious. “Don't birds name things?”

The bird’s staring at him, his beady eyes pathetically pleading. “Sometimes. If it’s really special. But not like people do. More food please?”

Sam shakes his head and pairs out bits of fruit in between bites of his sandwich of pork and nutty bread. It’s the best thing he’s eaten in weeks, considering meals on the Raft made his public high school lunches practically gourmet in comparison. They eat in silence for awhile, until a flutter of wings across the yard draws their attention

Another pigeon has landed and is eyeing the two of them suspiciously. It clearly dismisses them as unimportant and goes about pecking off the bits of juice and rind stuck to the bottom of the tray, ignoring them as disdainfully as the parrots had earlier.

The new arrival has Sam’s pigeon all aflutter, though, bobbing and pacing and damn near falling off the chair. “Holy crap,” he murmurs as quietly as he can. “Holy _crap_. It’s a _girl_.”

 _Oh_. Well, that explained a few things. “Cool, man. She’s hot, I guess. For a pigeon.” And that was officially the weirdest thing Sam’s ever had to say. He feels a little dirty. “Anyway, you should go for it.”

Every bob of his head’s accompanied by a little _fuck_ now but the pigeon’s pacing has given way to sharp focus on the lady bird’s movements. “Okay. Okay, I can do this. I need food. Give me more of that nice food please.”

“Uh. I only had one piece and there’s not much left –“

“GIMME FOOD THING NOW PLEASE NOW.” 

Geeze. Sam scrapes the last sliver of mango out of the bowl and passes it over. The pigeon flies over to the tray and then sidles casually over to the lady bird, cooing softly with his neck outstretched and the bit of fruit tucked into his beak. A ruffled ring of feathers slowly rises from his shoulders up to the crest of his head, and suddenly he’s nothing like the city pigeons Sam’s familiar with. The fruit doesn’t seem to keep him from whistling through his ABCs, though he gets the tune a little wrong somewhere around Q. 

The lady bird goes stone still, side-eyeing him intently. 

He bops a little closer, saying things like “Hey sexy want fruit? Pretty pretty. See how pretty.” over and over nonsensically until the cadence and rhythm are almost hypnotic. Then the lady pigeon looks him square in the eye, and all bets are off. The pigeon goes into full-on dance party mode, making loud “ _OOWOO_ ” sounds and rippling his neck feathers in waves of purple and green. 

Sam feels like maybe he shouldn’t be watching this but doesn’t want to hurt the little guy’s chances by getting up. 

The dance ends abruptly and the pigeon is left quivering, splayed on the ground, feathers ruffled and fully displayed. He _oowoo_ ’s one final time, like he just can’t help himself. Sam finds he’s holding his breath. 

The lady bird tilts her head at him for a long moment, then daintily takes the fruit from his beak, rubbing the side of hers against his as she withdraws. She swallows the mango down even more quickly than Sam’s pigeon had. 

“Okay, pretty bird,” she coos, and takes off for the tree line, singing a chorus of _follow me follow me follow me_ as she goes. 

The pigeon lays still in the grass for another half-second, then jumps up with a screeched “YES!” He hops onto and off of Sam’s arm, shouting “WINGMAN” and getting mango juice everywhere. 

He flies off after the female as fast as his stubby wings can take him, Sam’s full-bellied laughter chasing him into the trees.

+++

Hours later, after Steve’s said his goodbyes and is hanging around their rooms looking appropriately mopey, Sam decides enough is enough. Steve has every right to wallow in everything that went down over the past couple months – Sam is more than willing to respect that – but the only way that Sam is going to pull up from his own freefall is _to do something about it._

So he pushes Steve away from the windows and onto the couch, straddling his lap and laying a hand gently on his jaw. Sam doesn’t lean in or crowd him in any way; there’s no rubbing or grinding or anything that he’d normally do to get Steve’s attention. He just looks at him, and let’s Steve look back. What happens next isn’t up to him.

Their breath is almost in sync when Steve’s chin trembles the tiniest bit. “I kissed Sharon.”

“And kissed her well. We saw.” He matches Steve’s tone as best he can. It’s not quite a whisper, not quite a confession.

“And you’re okay with that?”

Sam smiles and shifts his hand to Steve’s shoulder. “If you are, sure. If she makes you happy then I’m happy.”

Steve nods. His eyes are huge and luminous, reflecting the light like something unreal. His own grip comes up to settle heavy on Sam’s thighs. “I was thinking of you. I kissed her but I was thinking of you. I’m always thinking of you.”

Sam hasn’t blushed since high school and he’s certainly not going to admit to doing so now. “Happy thoughts?”

“I could fly to Never Neverland and back.”

“God, that’s such a terrible line.” He rolls his eyes despite the grin on his face. Then he tilts his head down so their lips barely brush, noses bumping together like kids. “Oowoo, pretty. Sexy sexy.”

Sam can feel Steve’s answering grin when closes the distance between them. The kiss sends a jolt all the way from his scalp to his curling toes. 

They wind up staying on the couch all night. Sam doesn’t regret a damn thing.

+++

King Kitty’s benevolence does actually have its limits and knowingly harboring a group of internationally wanted superfugitives within his borders for longer than a fortnight is apparently one of them. T’Challa gifts them all with immaculately forged travel documents and not so subtly tells them to get the fuck on with their lives and the hell out of country.

The others go their separate ways after that, cashing in favors or heading to safe houses in places Sam doesn’t ask questions about. T’Challa offers a final gift in untraceable email accounts so that they contact each other once things settle down and that’s all Sam needs to feel like his team still has each other’s backs. Wanda goes off the map for awhile to hook up with some people one of the Ladies With Spears swears can help her gather her control but Sam’s not worried about her; she’s young and scared, but she’s more than capable of handling herself. And she kept the satellite phone Steve pressed into her hand when they hugged goodbye, so there’s that.

Steve doesn’t bother asking Sam where he’s running to. Sam’s been clear on the subject, after all: wherever they go, they go together.

He and Steve bounce around the continent for awhile, taking advantage of countries where the borders are thin and avoiding the ones they are very much not. Steve stands out like a sore thumb – not only because of his sheer _whiteness_ , an uncommon but not unheard of trait in this part of the globe, but because he’s so clearly pining for something that people in the street stop to offer their condolences. If anyone recognizes him they don’t say anything, perhaps assuming it’s the loss of his country that makes Captain America so sad.

Sam knows better, though. _America was never America to me._

It’s the people he left behind there that makes Steve look like someone ran over his puppy. It’s going to take a long time for those scars to heal. (Not to mention his freaking murderous _soulmate_ left on ice half a world away. That’s definitely a factor.) Sam does what he can to take Steve’s mind off of everything and only heckles him once or twice when he checks his messages every time there’s a signal strong enough. In all fairness, Sam’s doing it, too.

But then an email appears in their inbox and Sam suddenly has two depressed supersoldiers to worry about instead of just one. Yippee.

+++

The scientific miracle that T’Challa’s technicians refer to only as ‘The Procedure’ – and that didn’t sound like something out of a horror movie _at all_ – is designed to locate and remove the behavioral and psychological triggers that were forced into Barnes’ mind. They’re quick to point out that it won’t do anything to alleviate the emotional consequences of his past; that’s for Bucky to work through, and Bucky alone.

Sam has his doubts about The Procedure’s effectiveness. One, the halo and video monitoring equipment they’ll need to strap Bucky into look way too much like _A Clockwork Orange_ for his taste. And two, the “technicians” are a twitchy trio of grad students on an internship from the Royal Science Academy. Then again, he has been told they have really good schools here.

Sam’s in the room when they revive him, loitering behind the technicians, guards, and ever-frowning Lady With Spear. (Steve is front and center so that he’ll be the first thing Barnes sees. It’s a little melodramatic, but what isn’t when dealing with these two?) Sam’s still close enough to identify the exact moment Barnes regains consciousness. What can only be terror flickers over his face in the heartbeat between taking his first breath of warm air and opening his eyes. Steve smiles at him, hearty and hale, and Barnes’ whole posture melts. 

Sam wonders how many times he’s woken from sleep to find whole years have passed him by. And then he wonders how many years ago he lost the ability to even keep track of the passing time, and turns his thoughts to brighter things.

Like the Black Panther’s sister Shuri, a firebrand of a young woman just as likely to have a screwdriver tucked into her braids as a small combat knife. While the kids drag the others off to perform terrible acts on Barnes’s cerebellum, she’s hip deep in the design of his new arm. She refuses to actually _manufacture_ anything until Barnes has the chance to offer his suggestions which Sam finds endearingly considerate on her part. 

“Only monsters do not consult their patients before performing major surgery to install experimental technologies into their bodies. I am no monster.” Shuri’s face pinches like she bit into the world’s angriest lemon. “Understand this: We will not build this artwork for _you_. Or for _him_. We are building it for all the people in this world burdened with terrible prostheses or without the means to acquire one in the first place. What we have learned by studying the remains of your friend’s cybernetics has advanced the field ten times further than it was before. That his previous masters held such knowledge and chose to do nothing with it is one of the most heinous crimes I have ever encountered.” She nods politely before gathering her notes and empty mugs but turns to give Sam a hellacious glare before retiring into the private quarters of the palace. “Do not allow _this_ treasure to be stolen from us before the patent finalizes.”

There’s not a scrap of vibranium in her design. Sam loves her a little bit.

+++

They’re in Wakanda a total of six days, during which Barnes is immersed in a whirlwind of excitable neuroscientists and softly angry engineers. He responds to their odd mannerisms well, keeping his head in what can only be a week full of countless reminders to literal _decades_ of medical torture. Though the recovery center has to be the polar opposite of whatever hidden Hydra facilities they’d squirreled the Winter Soldier away in over the years: there’s always sunlight here, and bright colors and smiling faces. Sam can’t imagine Barnes has seen a lot of any of those things until recently.

The Procedure miraculously works without a fault. Afterward, one of the Ladies With Spears finally allows Shuri close enough to do her magic on Barnes’ shoulder and three days after _that_ he can juggle four eggs without breaking a single one. The Wakandans high-five them out the door, Sam buys his mom a postcard at the airport, and that’s the last they see of the tiny nation.

Traveling with three isn’t really any more challenging than traveling with two, though it does lend itself to a lot more awkward silences. Sam spends most of his watching the landscape roll by as they head in the opposite direction than they did last time they fled this part of the world – he has no idea what Barnes is up to in the backseat and doesn’t really care. The jeep they scavenged is roomier than the Beetle, so he’s at least got that working for him. Steve tries his best to engage them both in conversation but usually gives up after a couple minutes. Sleeping arrangements are… complicated, perhaps unnecessarily so, considering Sam and Steve aren’t hiding their relationship so much as not touching each other, below the belt or otherwise.

Being on the run just isn’t a sustainable. Even Barnes had eventually settled down in Bucharest before that shitshow Zemo had turned up (after Sam had chased Barnes for weeks, not that he’s bitter about that, oh no). 

They need to find somewhere off the grid but with a high enough population that the sudden addition of three big guys – two of which are big _white_ guys – won’t raise any red flags. They have a lot of prerequisites for a hideout considering they’re running for their lives, but they’re each fucked up differently enough to make things interesting.

Steve’s never actually lived outside city limits when not actively fighting in a warzone and goes a little nuts if there aren’t any people around. Sam takes it upon himself to veto anything in the middle of a desert; he’s spent far too long in the heat with absolutely zero positive associations to make dehydration worth it. Barnes doesn’t weigh in on the discussion other than to remind them that damn near every government in the world wanted to imprison and/or kill them, _and_ that Hydra was lurking somewhere with hopes of doing the same, so it actually didn’t matter where they ended up.

Sam and Steve cross off anywhere with higher than average snowfall, just in case.

In the end there’s only a few places they might be able to make a go at it, and New Zealand is the clear winner. The whole country might as well be fictional, it’s so perfect; plus, Sam’s only ever heard of it from those _Lord of The Rings_ movies. The locals are friendly to newcomers and there’s enough burly dudes in hoodies and cargo shorts running around that the three of them can easily pretend to be tourists on some rugged soul-finding vacation.

They rent a little house nestled into a valley near the city of Queenstown, just before the forest turns dense and the mountains rise into the distance. There’s a couple fruiting trees in the yard and an empty nesting box stuck to the back window. It’s small and cramped with the three of them sharing space but they each have their own bedrooms and doors to close when quarters get a little too cramped.

It feels like a liminal space, like somewhere not quite real. The air is way too still, as if it’s waiting for something. Sam sneaks into Steve’s bed at night and holds onto him tightly just in case the ground disappears and swallows them all whole. Steve never says a word, but his arms always wrap around Sam like he needs an anchor, too.

+++

The little house has surprisingly robust wifi and Sam passes the time by catching up on some of his favorite TV shows. There’s only so much pirated _Parks and Rec_ one can watch without going a little nuts, though, so he makes himself take breaks every so often. He sits on the porch and listens to the locals chatter on about their lives, cheerfully oblivious to the addition of three criminals to the neighborhood. This close to the city they’re mostly little songbirds, wrens and sparrows and the like, though there’s the occasional loud and chatty motherfucker that startles Sam enough to almost drop his coffee. The bright flashes of feathers he catches glimpses of are almost as jarring; birdspeech is pretty much the same everywhere he goes, and it’s easy to forget he’s somewhere new.

Steve takes it upon himself to clean every surface of their rental, religiously. It was nice before, but now it freaking _sparkles_. Sam’s started walking around barefoot just to give Steve something to do. He’s a little worried it’s verging on an obsession, some pathological need to organize their space reflecting an inner need to put his internal troubles in order, but then… what the hell else is Steve going to do? The man went from saving the world on a daily basis and running around like a chicken with his head cut off to hiding in a hobbit hole in Middle fucking Earth – he’s due a little neurosis. And if the bathroom sink is clean enough to eat sushi off of then Sam’s not going to pester him about it.

Honestly, he’s more concerned with what Barnes is up to that first week than what Steve’s doing. He doesn’t think it’s entirely wise to let the man wander by himself, though it’s pretty clear that of the three of them he’s far more comfortable setting up a new safe house. Sam’s caught him doing laps around the property, setting up surveillance cameras and hiding caches strategically around exit points. It’s a level of preparedness Sam dearly hopes they never need.

Barnes is also the one to do most of their shopping, taking long walks through the forest and down the road into town. He barely says a sentence every two days to Sam, but somehow picks up the local accent like he’s been living there all his life. Within a few days he has the proprietors of every shop on the main street eating out of the palm of his hand. He starts coming back with weird and delicious pastries, tiny pots with little plant cuttings, and the most random assortment of cutlery Sam’s ever seen.

One day Sam comes into the kitchen from watching two starlings duking it out over the same beetle to find Barnes doing something to the windows. He’s got a sheet of paper in one hand and what looks like a kid’s sticker in the other, carefully lining it up in the exact center of the glass before sticking it down, the fingers of his prosthesis making little clicking sounds against the window. He’s concentrating so hard Sam actually startles him when he comes up from behind.

“That’s gonna be hell to scrape off, you know. Cleaning lady’s not gonna like it.” 

Barnes glances over his shoulder at Sam before bending his head back to the sheet of stickers. “Steve’ll deal.” Sam thinks that’s it for the conversation – they’re already at word capacity given their standard interactions – but Barnes actually goes on. “I read online that windows kill billions of birds every year. They can’t see the difference between glass and reflections, so they fly right into them. This is supposed to keep that from happening. These islands are really isolated ecologically so there’s a ton of endangered species here. I mean, we’re not exactly a high-rise or anything but we are near a migration route so I thought…” Barnes shrugs and frowns at the stickers. It’d be easier to use the fingernails on his real hand to scrape up an edge but he seems determined to make it work with the metal ones. His shoulders are hunched, like he expects Sam to make fun of him.

He actually does have to bite back a pun or two; it’s verging on ridiculous, watching the feared and famed Winter Soldier defeated by children’s stationary. But there’s something… Christ, there’s something almost sweet about him. Sam half expects him to stick his tongue out like a five year old. 

And, well, there’s the other thing. Sam clears his throat and prepares for the greatest understatement of the century. “I like birds.”

Sam eyes Barnes, daring him to make a ‘bird costume’ joke. But he just puts a little heart-shaped locket sticker in the corner of the window and says: “Yeah, I know.”

Sam blinks and stares some more. Barnes’ hair falls from behind his ear to cover his face, and Sam is ninety percent certain he did it on purpose. It’d certainly be a valuable skill to have, not that Sam’s wishing for an escape route himself or anything.

The clock on the wall ticks. And ticks. And ticks. Barnes carefully places a pig in the opposite corner of the window.

Something jars and resets in Sam’s head. “Wait a minute. Are those - Is that _Abner_? Where the hell did you get _Hey Arnold_ stickers in the middle of New Zealand? I didn’t think they even made those anymore.”

“Shop down on the corner. Mr. Maziak gave ‘em to me, said they’d been there so long I could have them. I don’t know what _Hey Arnold_ is. I just figured the art would annoy Steve if he tried to clean them off.”

“What? Why? That cartoon is a masterpiece of children’s programming.”

Barnes shrugs. “They look weird but not in that way he likes. Scribbly. Kind of out of proportion.”

Oh hell no, this blasphemy _will not stand_. Not in Sam’s house. “Come on, we’re watching it. The whole thing, all at once. Let’s go. _One show to rule them all!_ ”

This time it’s Barnes that blinks, but he follows Sam meekly enough over to the couch.

+++

Barnes absolutely _loves_ the show. And rightly so; it’s about a bunch of weirdo kids hanging out in New York, what’s not to love?

Sam smirks all the way through dinner and Barnes’ dramatic retelling of ‘Helga On The Couch’. Steve asks all the right questions to keep the rant going and blames his welling eyes on the onions.

+++

Barnes joins Sam on a tour through the pantheon of Nikelodeon in the nineties. They watch all the way through _Rugrats, Aah Real Monsters_ , and even a couple episodes of _Salute Your Shorts_ before Steve can be enticed away from the Lysol long enough to join them.

He’d been cleaning in tighter and tighter circles around the living room, hovering in the hallway just outside. Sam thinks it might be the laughter burbling out of Barnes’ mouth that kept him away for so long, perhaps fearful of breaking whatever spell the stupid cartoons cast over his friend. Sam himself had startled at the first rusty chuckle and had to force himself back into relaxation before Barnes noticed anything.

They stream so much the wifi gets noticeably more sluggish and the couch cushions mold to their very shapely asses. The dents remain even when they’re not actively sitting on it. Then one night Barnes goes to bed earlier than usual and Steve engulfs Sam in the longest, hottest make out session of his entire life. The cushions are the last thing on his mind at the time, though they’re never quite the same after that.

The poor old couch never stood a chance.

+++

Steve starts acting cagey for awhile after that, disappearing for hours at a time without inviting either one of them along. The Oxyclean bottles start gathering dust, which is disturbing for multiple reasons. He always returns smiling, though, and Sam’s taken to spending every other night spooned up to him in a quivering, sated mess. The bed sheets are as quick a loss as the couch cushions.

Sam doesn’t ask Steve what he’s up to; he’s a grown-ass man and can have all the secrets he wants. It’s just… out of character for Steve not to share something and that leaves a bad taste in Sam’s mouth. He follows him one night all the way down to the community health center and feels immediately guilty for it. They offer classes on all manner of things there, from prenatal yoga to pet CPR, and if Steve’s taking one then it’s more self-actualization than he’d ever expected.

It’s not until a week later Sam discovers it’s not so much a _secret_ as it is a _surprise_ – just not for him. 

He hadn’t really noticed how easily sound carries in the little house before, though the noises coming from the back bedroom make him rethink those nights on the couch. The groans are longs and husky, the gentle creak of old bedsprings sending a pavlovian tingle down Sam’s spine and a rush of longing dancing across his nerves. He’s dropped his running shoes at the door and moved down the hall before he realizes it’s not Steve but _Barnes_ making all the racket, and it’s not until the murmured “ _right there, Stevie_ ” that he thinks it might not be something he wants to see.

He can see them on the bed together through the open door, Steve straddling Barnes and stretching down and back again, the muscles in his shoulders tensing under his shirt with the strength behind the movement. Barnes groans again as he’s pushed into the pillow.

Sam can actually see the tension bleeding out of Barnes’ when Steve switches to rolling the heels of his hands against the scar tissue around where the prosthetic meets his shoulder. His back arches and his toes – _goddamn it_ – his fucking toes curl into the mattress, his whole body one long luscious curve. He sobs, only once, and smothered in the pillow, but even at a distance Sam can tell it’s a good sound. Steve just smiles and does it again. Sam has no idea how those jeans aren’t cutting off the circulation to parts of his body Sam’s become quite fond of but he doesn’t seem to mind overly much.

Sam escapes back down the hallway and into the shower, trying hard not to think about anything at all. Steve’s waiting with a fresh glass of orange juice when the water finally goes cold though there’s no sign of Barnes. His hands are red and a little swollen, but his smile is goddamn beatific.

Sam also benefits from Steve’s massage class, but it’s not until later and not without a significantly smaller amount of clothing involved.

+++

Things are a little easier between Steve and Barnes after that. The hunted look in Bucky’s eyes starts to fade away and the curve of Steve’s shoulders slants towards ‘natural’ and less ‘carved out of a rock’. Sam rarely sees them actually touching one another – physical contact still seems sporadic and always initiated by Barnes – but they spend a lot of time _near_ one another, leaning close enough to share body heat and whispered conversation, always just a handbreadth away.

Sometimes Steve will join Barnes on his rambling walks through the woods. They both come back reeking like cheap cigarettes though Sam hasn’t seen Steve buy any since just after the Ultron thing. It sends an odd twist down his gut; it’s ridiculous of him to feel _jealous_ of Steve smoking with someone else, absolutely ridiculous that he’d miss sharing that part of Steve no one else got to see. Just ridiculous. 

And what kind of asshole does that make him, upset that Steve has another goddamn friend?

Ridiculous or not, asshole or not, Sam finds himself hunting for every lingering hint of tar and formaldehyde, searching out the nooks and crannies of Steve’s clothes and skin like a police dog sniffing for drugs. Sam rubs his face into the curve of Steve’s neck, just breathing in and holding on.

He really hates that smell.

+++

It’s weird, but being in the little house starts to feel more like a vacation than anything else, even with the aliases on their credit cards. They had plenty of money between them: Natasha helped funnel out Steve and Sam’s combined life savings at the start of all this mess, Bucky’d been raiding Hydra’s pantry before they’d shown up in Bucharest, and T’Challa even sent them off with access to some pretty hefty bank accounts, which Sam tended to call _Shut Up and Get Out_ money. He’d also given them his private direct number and strict instructions to _never call him with it_. Steve often ignored the last part, of course, especially when the international news started reporting things in that part of the world were getting pretty complicated pretty fast.

The thing was that they didn’t need to get jobs or embezzle funds to pay for their groceries, although God knew they went through a lot of them. But they had to do _something_.

Steve grew a beard that rubbed Sam the wrong way until it came in thicker and weirdly soft. His hair got a little darker when it grew out and eventually matched the beard. Despite the distinctive physique he was practically invisible on the street; no one expected to find Captain America shopping for deodorant in a tiny mall half the world away, so that helped, too. He started volunteering at the fire department and health center, though he really couldn’t do much more than unfold chairs there until he could take certification classes in the fall. His smile grew so blinding Sam had to remind himself to breathe every time he saw it.

The change was gradual enough that Sam didn't startle when he saw him out of the corner of his eye, though it was sometimes like a relaxed stranger had crawled into Steve's clothes while no one was looking. 

It’s actually Sam that has the hardest time settling down; he hates just restlessly spinning his wheels like he did in DC before he found the VA. Talking to the birds helps a little and he spends a lot of time in the woods behind their house. He trucks to the national park nearby, then all the way to the bird sanctuary next to the lake. It’s gorgeous country and on days with good weather he often finds himself returning with a lunch or just to sit and listen to the locals. It’s a bit of a drive but he doesn’t mind that.

He decides to take a page from Steve’s book and give volunteering there a try, even sweats through the review of his (fake) credentials to be allowed access to caring for some of the wildlife that lives permanently at the sanctuary. He becomes very popular very quickly, if he does say so himself, meeting a whole new flock of folk from all over, feathered and otherwise.

The parrots are particular little shits at first, causing all sorts of trouble and laughing at him having to clean up after them. But the flightless birds running around the park – like a cross between a chicken and a peacock – are really quite sweet, if a little bit daffy. He has to explain to them several times why they’re not allowed outside the fences and why it’s best for them in the long run to settle in and give it their best. Birds don’t really understand the concept of _extinction_ , though they’re certainly familiar with _loneliness_. 

Sam has to cuddle on the couch with Steve for a solid hour that night, the weight of hopelessness making him too heavy to move. Barnes even joins them, perching carefully on the other end of the sofa and rubbing Sam’s ankle with his warm hand. They don’t ask him what’s wrong; a bad day is a bad day is a bad day, and they’ve all had one or two since arriving. It’s not exactly like he could tell them he’d just spent four hours explaining the end of days to a takahē, anyway, not without spilling a secret he’d much rather keep. After so long keeping quiet Sam can’t quite imagine what it would be like if they knew. He feels better after working through some of their Netflix queue, anyway.

His next trip to the sanctuary is a completely different experience. The takahē mob him as soon as he enters their enclosure, demanding grooming and corn and attention. The parrots are even nice to him; they’re all pretty loud and gossipy, and apparently word spread pretty fast that Sam was the dude to talk to if you wanted help finding a mate, or getting more peanuts, or letting the keepers know that your toe was hurting for no reason. Sam’s even willing to share his fruit from lunch, which makes him their favorite person ever. He can barely walk from one aviary to the next without a group of birds docilely following behind.

The other keepers think it’s a riot. One of them records a video on her phone of Sam carefully picking his way through a kākā’s enclosure with the bird perched on his shoulder, squawking away at him while Sam tries to get a word in edgewise.

“No man, I cannot get you a girlfriend!”

“REEE AAA AAA. REEE AAA AAA.” 

“Yes, I’ve tried, don’t sass me.”

“ _Twoo woodle woodle_ REEEEEK.”

“Well, apparently they think you’re a dick. Maybe try not biting their heads when you groom them, you ever think of that?”

“ _Looooodle woo_.”

“Don’t be sad. Just don’t be a dick.”

+++

Sam spends a lot of time in the jeep driving to one place or another. It’s actually pretty nice; he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed moving purposely instead of just desperately. He didn’t even mind the repetition of the same roads over and over; the landscape remains breathtaking no matter how often he sees it and he gets to listen to his music or audio books without being distracted by one of the boys.

Barnes – who as far as Sam can tell spends most of his days either putting dye in Steve’s shampoo or pouting and staring out the window – comes with him one afternoon. He grins the unholy grin that promises teasing at a later date when he sees the birds literally hanging all over Sam, and it only grows wider when the other volunteers and expats practically do the same. 

He takes a pamphlet home with him about making a garden to attract and support local birds and chats up the coordinator about any other work the part needed, like repairs or planting or other odd little jobs. The coordinator takes one look at his broad shoulders and signs him up for turf and trail duty on the spot. It’s all scheduled and orderly, a system Barnes seems to appreciate, and he rides in with Sam when their projects coincide. Steve lends a hand as often as he can, too, using his strength and god-given bossiness as subtly as possible. 

Sam has to admit, New Zealand is a pretty good place to hide. After a few months in the little house Sam finds himself looking around at the birds and trees and the smile on Steve’s face and thinks that New Zealand might be a pretty good place to _live_ , too. And he understands why Bucky always seems afraid someone’s going to come take it away.

+++

It’s not just the country itself that feels comfortable. Somehow the three of them just… fit together, in a way Sam hasn’t felt since the early days of testing the EXO when he and Riley practically lived in each other’s back pockets. He doesn’t even mind the insane grocery bills, or running out of milk just when he wanted to make a smoothie.

He’d known Steve had to eat a lot because of his - *ahem* - _metabolism_ , but Steve actually doesn’t eat a lot. He eats _constantly_. Sam never really paid attention to it when they were living off takeout and MREs but the man almost always has some kind of snack on hand. Sam’s always finding protein bars and bags of jerky hidden strategically around the house, even in the bathroom. And it turns out Bucky isn’t much better.

Sam and Steve take up the old habit of jogging in the morning, though Bucky shudders at the word _cardio_ and refuses to budge from his bed. Instead he gets into the habit of making them breakfast while they’re out – a full spread, with toast and eggs and so much bacon Sam starts to wonder if he’s keeping pigs in the backyard. Steve smiles at him dopily and digs in, so Sam does the same.

He goes shopping that night and does it all over again the next day. It isn’t until the third breakfast smorgasbord he notices that Bucky never cooks waffles, even though there’s a perfectly good griddle next to the stove. It’s not until the fourth time that he notices Buck’s not actually _eating_ any of the food, either.

The docs in Wakanda had said his digestion been pretty banged up over the years thanks to Hydra’s cryofreeze and forcing him to get his nutrients from a tube for the better part of the last decade. His diet was improving, but slowly, and he mostly keeps to things easy to break down like simple sugars and the like. So Bucky adds some of the fruit he sliced for their French toast to his oatmeal but ignores the hash browns and sausages he must’ve made a special trip to the store for the night before.

Sam just doesn’t understand _why_. 

Steve scrapes the last of the syrup off his plate and heads over to the sink to wash it. He pauses at Sam’s elbow, considers him for a moment, and pecks a kiss right on his forehead before continuing on into the kitchen.

Sam almost swallows his fork. Bucky was sitting _right there_. Was he in some kind of _Twilight Zone_ episode?

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him and sips pointedly at his mango-kiwi smoothie. His smile’s a Mona Lisa curve Sam can’t even begin to classify. They can hear Steve whistle down the hall to the bathroom and Buck takes a breath.

“You know,” he says, and Sam braces himself. “Steve’s a little dense, but he’s a great guy. And he’s never half-assed anything in his life. He’s usually not one to initiate conversations about feelings, either, but he gets real chatty when you know how to ask the right questions.”

Bucky gathers his plate while Sam sits there with his mouth hanging open. “You knew?”

“I know a lot of things. I’m a professional, remember? Plus, the walls here are really, really thin.”

“And you and Steve _talked about this_? About _us_?”

He balances their glasses on top of the plate, silverware on the side, easy as a professional server in a restaurant. “Yep.”

“And. That’s it? You’re not going to tease me? Or tell me that if I hurt him they’ll never find my body?”

“I think of the two of you Steve’s the one more likely to do the hurting, don’t you? And I think you know that already.” Bucky stands there for a minute, looming, his eyes a soft gray in the early morning light. 

Sam’s suddenly hyper-focused on the soft friction of Bucky’s pantsleg brushing his chair. “Does that mean you gave _Steve_ the shovel talk?”

“Didn’t have to. He’s been lecturing himself behind your back for months.”

Bucky’s almost down the hall and out of earshot when Sam gets his mouth to work again. “Why do you never make waffles, Barnes?”

Bucky just yells through the wall. “Steve said I had to try yours first.”

Geeze. It’s like being ambushed in his own home.

+++

Why was it always white boys that fucked with Sam’s heart? He supposes, based on his track record, that he really should’ve seen the Steve thing coming. It just translated so neatly from _I want to fuck this man_ to _I would fight with this man_ to _I would die for this man_ that he never noticed it blur into _I would_ live _for this man_.

Hell. He’s never really been in love before. Not like this. Not when it mattered.

It’s not like Sam’s stopped looking at other people, either. He would gladly let Maria Hill bench-press him any day of the week. Hell, Rhodey had him damn near swooning the first time they shook hands. But he hasn’t had sex with anyone but Steve in what, a year? Two? He hadn’t even seriously thought about it before now. There’s just no one else he’d rather spend time with other than Steve.

Well, _quality time_ , anyway. He’d miss watching stupid TV shows with Barnes but it’s not like that’s the same thing.

Sam doesn’t feel pressured or upset about what Steve had and lost with Peggy. Or, come to think of it, whatever weird kind of complicated his relationship is with Bucky. _Sam’s_ relationship with Steve is valuable and that’s what matters. His _love_ is just as great as theirs. It’s just a different kind of love. And, if that kind of love happens to include the absolute best orgasms Sam’s ever had then all the better.

Sam tackles Steve off the front porch and into the grass, getting fresh stains all over his just-washed self. He laughs when Steve cusses at him and rubs their noses together. 

He whispers three words into Steve’s ear and Steve whispers them right back.

+++

For all the cuddling and dramatic confessions that ensue, things didn’t really change all that much. Sam stops sneaking into Steve’s room and moves his stuff into the closet there instead, but that’s pretty much it. Life continues on through the winter and into the spring.

They’ve been living at the little house for over six months when Steve officially loses his mind. He gets it into his head that they should take a break and actually “play tourist” for once, see what made the country so popular. He arranges everything, won’t even let Bucky see their itinerary, but they wake up super early in the morning and pile into the jeep with Steve behind the wheel. 

Steve’s not… the best driver and Sam says a little prayer in gratitude to his seatbelt several times along the trip. Bucky doesn’t seem to notice anything’s wrong, which is why Sam usually refuses to let him drive anywhere, either.

They drive _forever_ and stop for ice cream twice before Sam sees the first sign that hints at Steve’s impending brain aneurism. 

“ _Kawarau Bridge Bungy._ Seriously, Steve? Bungy? As in _bungy jumping_?”

Sam sees Bucky frown in the rearview and lick at his melting snowcone. “Pass.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Sam crumples up his napkin and angles an air conditioner vent toward the backseat. “Says the man that jumps out of planes without a parachute.”

“Oh please, like you have any room to talk. You routinely strap a rocket to your back and hope it doesn’t set your ass on fire. This is a New Zealand tradition; the first people to ever bungy jump did it from this bridge!”

“Right. I can’t think of any reason either one of us might want to avoid plummeting from a high place and into a canyon above a river. Certainly there is nothing in our pasts that could make falling like that even the slightest bit uncomfortable.”

Sam catches Bucky flinch again. “ _Hard_ pass.”

Steve thumps his head onto the steering wheel and Sam has to resist the urge to grab it out from under him. It’s only for a second but it’s long enough to give him heart palpatations.

They drive on in silence for a little while. It’s not that Steve’s an idiot or uncaring; Sam’s sure he’d never forget what it felt like when Bucky fell off that train just like Sam will never forget Riley, or Rhodes. He probably just… didn’t think about it. His hang-dog expression makes it pretty hard for Sam to stay made at him.

It’s even harder when Bucky asks: “When did you jump without a parachute?”

Steve whole-body flinches, shoulders rising up to cover his ears just as the bridge looms over the horizon. He makes a break for the turn lane. “You know what? I’m doing it anyway. You guys can wait in the car.” 

“What?”

“Are you serious right now?”

He’s barely pulled the jeep to a stop in the parking lot before he opens the door and hops out, leaving the keys in the ignition.

+++

Sam and Bucky watch the little shit get buckled into his harness from the relative safety of the viewing deck. They have to yell to be heard over the yawning gap between them.

“Are you seriously doing this? Seriously?”

“Yep. I made reservations for three, you know, in case you want to join me.”

Sam smacks the railing with his palm. Looks around at the trees and the gorge below. “Goddamn it. _Goddamn it_. All right, all right! I’ll go. Hook me up. Fucking _white boys_.” He empties his pockets into Bucky’s hands and almost drops his phone right down into the abyss. “Fuck. I said _hook me up_ , let’s go!”

Steve bounces a little as the worker escorts Sam to the platform. Sam’s own knees are shaking too much for anything like that. It’s not as if he’s afraid of heights or anything – Sam’s jumped out of more planes than Steve, really. He’s fine with the idea of himself doing it but watching _Steve_ fall, even connected to a safety strap…

He grabs on tight to Steve’s harness and doesn’t let go. If they were falling they were going to do it together. 

The workers set about lashing Steve and Sam’s feet together, smiling as if they’ve seen this a dozen times before. Then they all look over to Bucky as one, leaning on the railing of the viewing deck several feet away. His pockets are bulging with their stuff and their shoes are tucked primly between his own. His sunglasses make his expression unreadable.

Sam swallows around the lump in his throat. “You sure you don’t want to do this, Barnes? Might be good for you.” Might be bad, too, might be very _very_ bad. 

But Bucky just tilts his face into the sun and smirks at them, comfortable from his perch. “No thanks. Once was enough for me. And don’t think this gets you out of the parachute talk. I’m not done with you yet, Stevie.” 

Sam’s pressed close enough he can actually hear Steve gulp in terror. But then the guide waves at them and they shuffle a little until the great yawning world opens up below his feet. He’s missed this, missed his wings and the wind in his hair. Anticipation flutters through his gut just as gravity pulls him down with airy, weightless dizziness.

+++

Bucky records a video of them jumping, just a ten second clip of Sam and Steve growing smaller as they plummet straight down. He’s very blasé about the whole thing. “There you go, America. Your two favorite idiots.”

The line snaps taught just as their heads hit the water and you can hear Sam cussing all the way up on the bridge, though the actual words are hard to make out. Steve’s laughter is drowned out when they bounce up just to be doused again. The third and fourth bounces send them spinning and _woo-hoo_ ing like mad men.

Bucky sighs just off camera. “They’re gonna smell like wet dog the whole way home.”

He posts the video to tumblr. Because of course he does.

+++

In the end Sam’s not sure whether it’s the “kākā encouragement” video or the “superheroes fail at bungy” vine that gives them away. To be fair Stark probably knew where they were this whole time but it’s only after everyone else clues in that he uses the crappy flip phone to arrange a meeting. He rents out a place in neutral territory for something he calls ‘Sorry Schwarma’. It’s clearly an in-joke Sam doesn’t get, though it makes Steve smile a little sadly.

It has got to be the most awkward meal Sam has ever eaten, like, officially. But compromises are made anyway, some complicated legal voodoo is accomplished, and suddenly they’re escaped convicts no longer.

There’s a moment towards the end, while Stark’s rambling away to his lawyer, where Sam touches Steve lightly on the arm. They look at each other and they know; this is a crossroads, this is a decision to be made. They could return to the land they were born in, return to the life they were leading with its spangles and starry costumes. Or they could go home.

Bucky made his own choice before Sam and Steve even packed an overnight bag; he was waiting for them on the porch when they rolled up to the little house in the valley, having never even left. He trusted them, he said, to do what was right for him.

In their absence Bucky’s turned the struggling garden into a paradise, a riotous collection of native flowers in every shape and size. He even added a burbling fountain and feeding trough to put out fresh fruit and nectar for visiting neighbors. Sam is so overwhelmed with affection he pulls him right into a hug, and Steve joins in from the other side to make a Bucky burrito.

Bucky just laughs and pats them on the elbow with what little mobility they leave him.

+++

The ‘vacation’ becomes ‘expatriatism’ and they go start the long process of becoming actual citizens. They sign a long-term lease for the little house and surrounding bit of land and Steve hangs a sign with ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ written with backwards letters on the trees out back. Bucky and Sam roll their eyes but let him.

+++

One clear, still night Sam is drawn out onto the patio by a sound. There’s really no reason at all he should be hearing it – the bird making it is so far away, hidden and safe on islands across the water. But he does hear it, faintly, a booming echo repeating across the distance. _I am ready. I am ready._

The noise changes in pitch, higher, but no less determined. _I am here. I am here. I am here._

No one answers the call. Sam doesn’t think anyone’s meant to.

The booms go on until the wind shifts and he can’t make out the words anymore. He stays on the porch listening anyway until Steve joins him, sidling up close to stare into the silent night.

+++

Sam skips his run the next morning to make waffles for the boys, using his mother’s recipe but adding chocolate chips and bits of berries. Steve eats them as quick as Sam can get them off the grill, moaning through every bite. Bucky even tries one, ducking his head and nodding along to Steve’s paroxysms of joy.

It’s a good moment. It gets a little better when Steve pulls up an app on his phone so soft music fills in the sunny spaces between the cabinets. Sam chews and sighs, watching the birds hop around the garden through the window.

The song changes to something with a little more rhythm and Sam catches Bucky bopping along as he washes the dishes. The next track is even more catchy, one of those weird reimagined things on YouTube Steve likes so much, and Bucky does a little shuffle step back to the table. 

He’s smiling when he holds his hand out to Steve. “I want to try something. Come on, I used to be good at this.” 

“Yeah, but I wasn’t!” Steve laughs and shakes his head but gets up anyway. Bucky pulls them into a waltz, hands held out and bodies curled toward each other in that old fashioned way Sam’s never able to attempt without feeling like an idiot. 

[The song’s](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjWlr7SttDUAhWG6yYKHSeACpAQtwIIMDAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_s58zUObXBU&usg=AFQjCNHKhGD4UCgbf3qIzbRM6_Eud2PD3A) jazzy and smooth and matches their ambling steps perfectly. Sam has to look down at the swirls in his coffee when Bucky starts humming along.

_“You're my end and my beginning, even when I lose I'm winning. 'Cause I give you all of me, and you give me all of you –“_

He looks up when Steve bursts out laughing to see Bucky hopping on one foot, the other cradled in his metal hand. They’re both grinning through the tears in their eyes, though Bucky’s might be more pain than sentiment.

“I’m sorry! You know I’m no good at this.”

Bucky rubs at his big toe. “I’ve seen you parkour off a flying helicopter and you’re telling me dancing is beyond you?”

“Yeah. I always forget what my feet are supposed to be doing.” Steve spies Sam out of the corner of his eye. Sam’s really come to fear that sneaky-little-shit smile. “But you know who I bet is an amazing dancer?”

Oh no. “No no no no, leave me out of it. I am not getting involved in your white prom nonsense.”

Bucky glances up at Sam from under his lashes, the tip of his pink tongue just peeking from between his teeth. The hand he holds out only shakes the tiniest bit.

“Whattya say, Wilson? Wanna show this giant lug how it’s done?”

Sam puts his hands up in protest but somehow finds himself bullied onto the linoleum anyway. Bucky’s hand is dry and rough with calluses along the tips of all his fingers – does he even have any fingerprints left at all? – but the metal hand’s incredibly gentle as it tugs him that last little bit closer. It settles so lightly in the small of his back Sam can barely feel it.

Sam’s not about to tell them this, but at _his_ prom his date just slung her hands over his neck wobbled around to Boyz II Men for awhile. Every time he’s slow danced after that’s involved a hell of a lot more grinding and absolutely no chaperones. 

_This_ time? They rock, back and forth, Bucky’s socks _shh_ -ing softly on the floor. [The song changes](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiSvbznttDUAhXFeSYKHUtXD54QtwIIJDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFC0vZeUXOIk&usg=AFQjCNG9qXgedLDRXPc4YgC1n3DVAcyfcQ) to something Sam swears he’s heard before but finds impossible to identify; jazzy, but with a bit of a beat that kicks it up a notch. Sam’s hips swivel into Bucky’s grip without his conscious decision to do so.

Buck’s posture changes, his center of gravity dropping lower, hips pushing out, hands dipping low. Their pace slows until they're barely moving.

Sam’s practically draped over him now but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind the weight. His cheek rests against the side of Sam’s head; his early morning stubble itches. Sam leans into it further, feels like he should maybe be sweating.

Sam’s eyes close sometime during the final chorus. Bucky’s nose nestles into the place just behind where his cheekbones turn sharp. Sam tilts his head –

And Bucky does not kiss him.

Instead he smiles, shyly, and presses dry lips against the scars on Sam’s knuckles from gripping the EXO flight suit. He escapes down the hall without looking back.

Steve sighs and stops the next track before it begins to play.

+++

It’s around this time Sam’s willing to admit he might have a bit of a problem. Only he’s not even sure it _is_ a problem, so much as a _complication_.

He considers what he knows about Bucky, from before and after Hydra dug their fangs into him. The signs are all pointing to one very specific destination and Sam’s not sure how to go about folding the map so it fits.

The thing is that Bucky is one sexy motherfucker. That isn’t even a question. Like, the dark and dangerous kind of sexy that made you want to raw him for _days_ … but also the kind of sexy that made you want to just sit and stare. Like, if he passes through a patch of good lighting then Sam’s wasting a good couple minutes just taking it in, whether he wants to or not. He can finally see how Steve can spend hours drawing the same profile over and over, with subtle shading differences on the stubborn cleft in Bucky’s chin.

Barnes’ beauty inspires a completely different kind of reaction than Steve’s. Erskine really wasn’t fucking around with the ‘perfect’ part of the formula. Tony once changed Steve’s ringtone to “I Can Make You a Man” from _Rocky Horror_ and Sam couldn’t even be mad about it. Like – _damn_. That shoulder to waist ratio should not be physically possible, let alone something Sam got to rub his greedy little hands all over. Steve was pretty in a way that made you want to fuck it up. Barnes – _Bucky_ – was pretty in a way that made you want to _preserve_ it. And feed him sandwiches and wrap him up in a soft sweater before ravishing him right out of it again. It's a very confusing dynamic.

And, by all accounts, not something Bucky’s likely to be okay with.

Sex has always been Sam’s favorite fallback when times got tough, even though it’s only been with Steve for the last long while. It’s how he shows people he cares about them. He’s not sure how to make a relationship work when sex isn’t an option.

But what is a relationship, really? He already spends time with Bucky, lives with him, even touches him a little. What’s the point of all that if an orgasm or two – or three, damn it, Steve – was the only endgame? 

Sam’s happy now. But he thinks there’s the glimmer of a chance he could be happier. Maybe they all could.

It hadn’t felt like a chance for him and Steve to finally be alone together when they’d gone to the Schwarma Summit. It’d felt like they’d left something behind. The three of them together just worked better. It _felt_ better. But how would acknowledging that connection change it?

There was only one way to find out.

He looks at the little islands across the water and thinks: _I am ready. I am here._

+++

Steve and Bucky apparently skipped the emotional panic attack portion of the conversation. They’re stretched out together on the couch, haphazardly twining their feet together and working their way through two different _Song of Ice and Fire_ books. Bucky straightens a little when Sam barrels in from his walk through the woods but Steve just smiles at him and tugs on Bucky’s ankle until it’s back in his lap.

The whole exchange only takes a second or two but Sam has the disconcerting notion that Bucky tried to stand when he entered the room and Steve reeled him back in. Which, considering what he’s been pacing around outside about for the last twenty minutes, was really kind of fucked up. And exactly what they needed to have this discussion about in the first place.

Sam rubs his hands together, squaring up to them both. "Okay. Today, we communicate like men."

Bucky, dry as a bone, slides a bookmark in-between the pages. "I don't think that's how that meme goes."

Steve doesn’t even look up from his book. "What's a meme?"

“Oh please, like you don’t spend even more time on the internet than I do.”

Steve’s eyes grow anime huge and he drops _A Dance with Dragons_ onto the couch. “What’s the internet? I’m _so confused_. Somebody call Stark so he can explain it to me again!”

Sam points a finger at him. “Don't think I won’t pull up your search history, you little shit.”

“ _Hipster blogger_ ,” Bucky singsongs at him.

“I am _not_ a hipster blogger. I enjoy landscape photography and sharing it with friends online.” 

Bucky huffs and fishes the book out from between the cushions before the tired springs attempt to eat it.

“All right, but can you blame me? We’re in goddamn _New Zealand_ for Christ sakes, the absolute Mecca of sweeping vistas. It’s gorgeous outside and this is the _suburbs_ , I haven’t even begun to shoot in the countryside yet.”

“With a vintage camera you bought off ebay and a soft filter over everything? Yeah, sure that makes sense, right. You’re not a hipster at all, pal. The beard is just for camouflage.”

“The beard _is_ for camouflage. You know that, you’re the one who told me to grow it in the first place. And you’re one to talk, Mister I-spend-four-hours-on-tumblr-a-day. What the hell are you even doing on there?”

Bucky sighs. “It’s a wretched blue hellscape, man, I don’t even know. Mostly talk about _Doctor Who_ and the new _X-Men_ movies if I’m honest.”

Sam waves his hands in front of their faces. “ _Guys!_ Can we focus here?”

“ _Yes, ma'am._ ” They say it in perfect unison, almost like they practiced while Sam was out of the room. They smile at each other like the proud dorks they are.

Sam closes his eyes and contemplates his life choices. “Assholes. I’m living with hundred year old assholes.” 

Steve and Bucky continue to grin at him. It doesn’t make what he’s going to say any easier since the script he came up with just sounds vaguely ridiculous in his head now. But he’s too nervous to adlib, so he clears his throat and goes for it anyway.

“I’ve been thinking about birds lately.” 

Steve raises his eyebrow and lowers his chin. “Uh huh. Birds?”

“Yes. The thing about birds is that even though they’re all essentially the same thing there’s so much diversity among them that there’s no solid definition of how a bird is supposed to act. Each species is different. Hell, even some individuals are different. And that’s amazing.”

Steve looks vaguely confused. Bucky just _looks_ , his mouth softening around the edges as he listens to Sam ramble. There’s a familiar twinge of panic – Bucky’s expression is far too _knowing_ for comfort – but it’s chased out by the butterflies flittering through his stomach. The look in his eyes _does things_ to Sam, god, like make him want to write poetry and shit. 

He needs to focus if he’s going to get through this without making a fool of himself. “So all the different types of birds evolve to fit their environment and that’s why you’ve got penguins and flightless parrots and condors the size of Volkswagens. And how they prefer to pair up depends on the environment, too, to a point. Like, monogamy doesn’t make a whole lot of sense biologically until you consider pair-bonds and gestation periods, and even then you have to focus on an almost individual level. And don’t even get me started on ducks –“

“People aren’t birds, Sam.”

He blinks at Steve, mouth hanging open and hands gesturing emptily. Bucky glances between the two of them. “Is this the polyamory talk? Because the way Steve explained it made a lot more sense.”

Sam really can’t feel his jaw right now. “I. You. Steve?”

Steve has the decency to look sheepish, though he’s still far too comfortable for Sam’s current state. “You made some good points before. I looked into it. Bucky wanted to know so I told him. Sorry if I stepped on your moment.”

“I. _Moment_ , I -“ Sam finally draws in a whole breath. “Steve Rogers, you are a _little shit!_ ”

Steve grins, cocky, and holds his arms out. “Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

Sam practically jumps into this lap, planting a sloppy kiss right on his idiot mouth. He tucks his body under Steve’s where it wants to go and Steve holds onto him _hard_. Sam kisses the closest skin he can reach, which turns out to be just above the little vein running around Steve’s bicep. It’s momentarily thrilling to have something like that under his mouth; the warmth of it simmers into the usual place in his chest. It’s a spot that feels eternally warm and bursting, full of _Steve_ and _sun_ and _surprise_.

They cuddle like that for a long moment before Sam notices the heavy silence fallen over the room. He listens to the steady rhythm of Steve’s heart under his ear and can’t hear anything else. Eventually he turns his head so his voice isn’t entirely muffled by Steve’s boobs. “You two aren’t fucking are you?” 

Bucky chokes on nothing and starts coughing, the sound farther away than Sam hoped for. Steve just smiles and kisses the top of Sam’s head. “Not at this particular moment in time, no. And not at any other time, either, which is what I think you actually meant by that.”

Sam shifts so that he’s propped underneath Steve’s arm instead of squished by it and searches for Bucky, who’s moved off the couch and is hovering in the door to the hallway. He’s shifting a little from side to side, looking like he wants to leave but also like he’s not sure he’s allowed to stay.

“Oh, _Bucky_.” Steve lets his head thump against Sam’s, the thick bone of his skull echoing hollowly. 

Sam remembers thinking there was a weight to that word when Steve sighed it in their bed. There’s a whole sentence in it now. That one word carries all the emotion and hope that it took Sam twenty minutes of talking to himself to figure out. He can see it hit Bucky like a blow; he flinches his eyes closed and breathes out, sharply. Then he shuffles back into the room on nearly silent feet. 

Bucky takes in the tableau of Steve and Sam in each other’s arms, patiently waiting to see what his response will be. He stops several feet away from the couch and braces his hands on his hips, determinedly.

“I know… what you two do together. The. The _sex_.”

Oh, lord. Sam thought he was prepared for this. He most assuredly is not.

“I don’t.” Bucky swallows and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want that. I don’t think I ever will. I know that makes me – I know it’s not right to not want sex. You’re both amazing and gorgeous and I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.”

“Buck. Bucky. Nothing’s wrong with you.” 

“I think I’m broken. I’d have to be broken not to want you. To want _both_ of you.” 

“You’re not broken, Bucky. You’ve never been broken. A little _different_ , maybe, but never –“ 

Sam punches Steve in the knee and regrets it pretty much immediately after, but it shuts him up long enough for Sam to get a word in edgewise. It’s that map unfolding again. “Can I ask you something without you freaking out?”

Bucky nods, his breath back under control again.

“Did you always feel this way? About sex, I mean. Like, back when you were taking out a different girl every night and dancing off the soles of your shoes, did you ever want to take her home and put your hand up her skirt?”

He frowns and looks down at the carpet, then shakes his head no.

“Okay. What about Steve? Did you ever want to do that to Steve?”

Bucky frowns even harder, the motion of his head dislodging some of the hair from behind his ear.

“So. Is this something that was broken in you? Or is it just you?”

Buck looks up through his grown-out bangs, his eyes huge and watery. The tears are stubborn things that refuse to fall and make his lashes clump together in little spikes. Sam’s tired heart beats hard against his ribs and up into his throat; he can feel Steve’s do the same where their chests are pressed together.

Sam swallows around the thumps. “I wanted to kiss you this morning. You know that, right?”

Bucky smiles a little. “Yeah. I was gonna let you but it just didn’t feel right. It was nice, dancing with you. I guess kissing might be okay, too, but it’s just – I dunno. _Gross_.”

Steve dares to grin a little. “Kissing is gross?”

“Well,” Sam sighs, “you have to admit saliva has a certain viscous quality to it.”

“Exactly! Kissing is gross. I don’t know how you two stand to do it as often as you do.” Bucky shivers dramatically before reining in his ‘that’s nasty’ face. He sighs again. “If it was going to be anyone it would be you. You know that right, Stevie? Sam?”

“Of course I do, Bucky. Sam does, too.”

Sam feels like he’s on the verge of hyperventilating to be honest. This has been so long in coming that he doesn’t have the faintest clue about what to do next. But he’s the goddamn _king_ of pretending to have his shit together, so he tightens his grip on Steve’s knee and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“So you don’t like kissing. What _do_ you like? What can Steve and I can give you that you want?”

Bucky blinks at him. “You don’t… _mind_ about all that? That I don’t want to have sex with you?”

“Well, I can’t say I wasn’t _hoping_.” Sam smiles to let Bucky know he’s only teasing. Buck grins and sticks his tongue out – message received. “But the thing is... Love and sex are two different things. Sometimes one can be used to show the other but it's not a _requirement_ or anything. I didn’t understand that until recently. And I’ll tell you something I’ve learned in my wise and ancient thirties that would have shocked me ten years ago: sex is _amazing_ but it’s not actually all that important. What’s important is your _home_. It’s the people you feel at home _with_.” 

“Amen.” Steve rubs his hands over Sam’s shoulder. “I read once that sexuality, like life, is on a spectrum. We’re all just reflecting light. It’s up to you, and only you, to decide what colors you want to reflect.”

“That’s deep, man.”

“Thanks. I try.”

Bucky bites his lip and frowns some more. Sam supposes there’s nothing he can really do about the urge to bite it for him except ignore it, so he tries his best to do that. Bucky sees him do it, though – and a smirk creeps its way across his damp mouth, the lushly pink bit of flesh popping back to fullness. 

Sam’s mind fizzles out to static. His pupils dilate so fast he can actually feel it happen. “You little shit.” 

Bucky laughs at him, covering his face with his hands to hide his blush. Steve looks between the two of them, completely out of the loop that anything just happened.

“Both of you! _Little shits_. You learned it from each other, I swear to god. That was _not_ fair, Barnes!”

Bucky’s laughing so hard he’s bent over double; the bend of his elbows the only thing keeping him standing. Sam… can’t help but smile back. Watching Bucky laugh like that – there’s a flutter of warmth in his heart, like someone ruffled all his feathers up and the sun’s finally getting through to warm the skin underneath. He feels a few teardrops fall through his hair and knows Steve feels the same way.

Bucky stands with a gasp, face so full of joy Sam’s stomach does a barrel roll. He breathes in deeply a couple times, grinning at them still. “You asked me what I wanted,” he says, wiping away the moisture streaming down his cheeks. “I want more of this. I want to be happy for once. And stay here, if you’ll let me.”

His smile softens, the lines on his face grooving into perfection. “I love you two assholes. I don’t want to be anywhere but with you.”

He says it easy as anything, like they’d asked him what the weather was doing outside. It doesn't fully register for a minute. But Steve gets it right away; Sam can feel him trembling. He buries his face in Sam’s shoulder so just his eyes are peeking out, ridiculously, hopelessly in love and overwhelmed by it.

It’s up to Sam to say something. Heaven help them.

“All right then. We got you, Barnes. Get on in here.”

Bucky grins and dives on top of them, right into Steve’s open arms and smacking Sam in the chin with his elbow. There’s a stupid moment full of flailing arms and half-shoves until they find their balance, curled into and around each other like the branches of the fuchsia tree outside. The couch creaks ominously but Sam’s too comfortable to care. 

God. How did he get here? It’s miles, literally _miles_ from where he started, and now he’s nesting with two supersoldiers in the suburbs.

But it doesn’t really matter how or why he ended up here. What matters is that Sam is happy _now_ – happy and in love, squished between two giant impossible men on the world’s most uncomfortable couch with a sparrow yelling tiny obscenities outside their window. 

This is what his happiness feels like.

Of course, it’s at that precise moment the couch comes apart underneath them with an almighty crash and sends him sprawling onto the rug. But Bucky’s laughter and Steve’s cursing still make it absolutely worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I was very fortunate to claim [yawpkatsi](http://yawpkatsi.tumblr.com/)'s artwork in the CapReverseBang. It's been an absolute joy working with her. [Be sure to swing by and show her some love, okay?](http://yawpkatsi.tumblr.com/post/162110441207/snarklyboojum-this-fledgling-thing-a)  
> \- Sam quotes Langston Hughes' poem [Let America Be America Again](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america-be-america-again).  
> \- Sam’s pigeon doesn’t have a name though he was referred to as BirdBro in earlier drafts. He’s actually a Wakandan rock dove, a subspecies of [African olive pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_olive_pigeon) native only to Wakanda and therefore endangered, though they’re fairly common in suburbs and cities therein. I blatantly made the species up for this fic because I love birds and who’s going to tell me not to?  
> \- I’m basing my characterization of Shuri and the Dora Milaje – sorry, Ladies With Spears – on the three seconds they appear in the Black Panther trailer since the film isn’t actually out yet. I’m really hoping I’ve got them at least partly in character, though. We’ll see.  
> \- Aaaand my low key obsession with [Postmodern Jukebox](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCORIeT1hk6tYBuntEXsguLg) and the MCU continues.  
> \- I have never been to New Zealand or any of the places mentioned in this fic, so please take any geographical errors with a grain of salt. Sam’s experience in the bird sanctuary is based off of my own interaction with captive birds and the [Te Anau Bird Sanctuary’s website](http://www.doc.govt.nz/teanaubirdsanctuary) (Oh, and [Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre](http://www.pukaha.org.nz/)). I might have merged two different facilities in my head but this is fiction so let’s pretend, okay? The plight of New Zealand’s native wildlife is very real, however, as is that of several billion migrating songbirds every year. The bird making strange booming sounds is a [kakapo](http://kakaporecovery.org.nz/about-kakapo/). You can listen to its boom and ching at the link above.
> 
> I tumbl [@snarklyboojum](http://snarklyboojum.tumblr.com/), in case you want to see what I'm up to.


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